The zenophobic nationals of Croatia & Dalmatia (such as the writer of this hate piece) pretty much come from the white trash/cracker portion of society. Like poor zenophobes everywhere the HDZ and HSP used racist arguments to explain away their followers low social-economic standing.
Now after 12 years of being in control, and Croatia-Dalmatia poorer than it was in 1988.......the zenophobic crackers in the HDZ & HSP have no more one else to blame....hence the desperate confused tone of the screed UtahGirl posted.
It is very sad what the HDZ & HSP did to Croatia-Dalmatia. Unemployment is stuck at 23-23%. foreign debt is $13-14 Billion and rising. Toruist revenues are 1/2 their 1988 levels (in real dollars). The best and the brightest have left and show no signs of coming back. What little industry exists in the hands of absentee owners.
The HDZ & HSP offered their followers a ez-pass into the EU & prosperity back in 1989-90. What those followers got was a one way ticket into poverty & oblivion. It is tragic.
Correct. That was also one of the roots of the Serbo-Croat conflict in the making. Whereas Serbs were used a free yeoman and farmer-wariors, exempt from taxes, since the Thirty Years War (17th century), working directly for the Habsburg monarch. Croatia, although nominally still a "state," was in effect a province dominated by Austria or Hungary. The official language in Croatia was either Latin, German or Hungarian, depending on the time period.
Because of their different social status, and because many a Serb in Austry-Hungary was a professional, it is understandable that their political agenda did not necessarily coincide with that of the predominantly serf Croatian populus. This caused great resentment, seeing Serbs as "privileged" and Croats as downtrodden. I see it as just plain envy that grew into a genocidal hate embodied in the "program" of Ante Starcevic and Josip Frank, their progeny, the so-called Independent State of Croatia 1941-1945, which continues to this day.