title: Deny thy neighbor: Identity Panics and the Denial of Neighbor’s Identity in the Southeastern Europe
abstract: This paper is an attempt to explain the specific phenomenon of denial of identity, most often of one's neighbors.Identity denial most often occurs in moments of identity panic, when a community feels threatened.The main topos of the observed strategies of identity denial is that some of our neighbors are "fictional" and "non-existent peoples".They have been created by great enemy forces using apostates from "Us" and converts from "our" faith.Identity deniers claim that these "fake" nations have 