The Great White Hoax: Two Centuries of Selling Racism in America

In this eye-opening debut study, Kadish, an American studies professor at Pace University, aims to show that MAGA-era racism is “less an aberration than a return to form” by pointing to a long history of white supremacist hoaxes in the U.S. Noting that many of the country’s major xenophobic, racist, anti-Catholic, and antisemitic movements were galvanized by “forgeries, impersonation,” and “bogus” data, Kadish explains that these hoaxes always had two goals: proving the “inferiority” of nonwhite races (which in earlier times also meant non-Protestant), and proving the existence of conspiracies against the white race (à la the “great replacement theory”). Among Kadish’s examples is the 1835 autobiography of Maria Monk, in which she claimed she had been raped by a Catholic priest while living as a nun and had fled her convent to avoid having her baby ritualistically strangled. Though revealed immediately as an anti-Catholic hoax (it was penned by the Protestant clergyman who actually fathered her child), it remained a bestseller for nearly two decades. Other examples include the work of Thomas Dixon, who wrote the novel the film The Birth of a Nation was based on, and Henry Ford’s spreading of antisemitic conspiracy theories. Kadish concludes by raising troubling concerns about how AI could lead to a “Great White Hoax era with a more thorough top-down, Soviet-style truth control.” This meticulous and captivating account makes a disturbing case that America is easily swayed by racist cons. (June)