Dveri were founded by Branimir Nešić in 1999 as a Christian right-wing youth organisation consisting mainly of students from the University of Belgrade which regularly arranged public debates devoted to the popularisation of clerical-nationalist philosophy of Nikolaj Velimirović, a bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church who was canonized in 2003 and is considered a major anti-Western thinker. The organisation promotes a pronounced Serbian nationalist ideology. Based on the assessment of partiality and lack of condemnation of crimes by another ethnicity, Dveri opposed a resolution passed by the Serbian parliament in March 2010 which condemned the Srebrenica massacre committed by the Bosnian Serb Army in eastern Bosnia in 1995,. Dveri also fiercely oppose unilateral proclamation of independence of Kosovo and Metohija. It is also well known for its opposition to gay rights. In October 2010 the very first Gay Pride parade was held in Belgrade, in which thousands of anti-gay protesters clashed violently with police units securing the parade participants. One of the far-right groups which organised the anti-gay protest were Dveri, and a member of the organisation was quoted by The Economist as saying that the protest was a form of "defence of the family and the future of the Serbian people". In August 2011, in the run up to the 2011 Pride Parade in Belgrade, the organisation warned that organising such an event could feed social unrest and provoke riots, and added that if the government allowed the march to go forward that "Belgrade will burn like London burned recently". In fear of more violent clashes, the authorities eventually decided to cancel the event, a decision which was criticised by human rights groups such as Amnesty International, which specifically singled out Dveri and Obraz as the main right-wing nationalist groups responsible for "orchestrating opposition to the Pride".
Citizen's group (2011–2015)
In March 2012 the movement collected 14,507 signatures to register as an electoral list for the May 2012 Serbian parliamentary election. The Dveri Movement received 4.35% of the popular vote, failing to pass the 5% minimum threshold to enter parliament. In September 2012 Dveri leader Vladan Glišić called for a "100-year ban" on pride parades in Belgrade, describing such an event as "promotion of a totalitarian and destructive ideology" and accused the ruling Socialist Party of Serbia of being influenced by a "gay lobby". In September 2013, in the run-up to another attempted gay pride march in Belgrade, Boško Obradović said that the event amounted to "the imposition of foreign and unsuitable values, laid out before minors - the most vulnerable section of society". In 2014, the eurosceptic Democratic Party of Serbia of ex-Prime Minister Vojislav Koštunica was considering options about the formation of a "Patriotic Bloc" which would stand up to the political elite's dominating pro-EU stance, the coalition being called forth by the Dveri movement. However, DSS initially rejected the proposal, stating that the proposed parties did not fully embrace DSS positions and that they merely want to join to enter the parliament. Dveri again ran alone in the March 2014 Serbian parliamentary election, winning 3.58% of the vote, failing again to pass the 5% minimum threshold to enter parliament. In November 2014 Dveri and the Democratic Party of Serbia declared that they would contest the next elections as the "Patriotic Bloc" alliance. In January 2015 PULS and the SLS also joined the bloc.
