In the 1920s, Italian fascists targeted Yugoslavs—especially Serbs—and accused Serbs of having "atavistic impulses", claimed that Yugoslavs were conspiring together on behalf of "Grand Orient masonry and its funds" and one anti-Semitic claim that Serbs were part of a "social-democratic, masonic Jewish internationalist plot".
It advanced the now-discredited idea, then prevalent in contemporary scientific racism, that so-called "Mongolian imbecility," a form of mental retardation now known as Down syndrome, was an atavistic throwback to the more primitive Mongoloid race.