The anti­se­mit­ic forgery The Pro­to­cols of Zion pro­mot­ed by Hen­ry Ford in the 1920s remains dan­ger­ous despite long ago being proven a fab­ri­ca­tion. From this expe­ri­ence, Amer­i­can Jews are unique­ly posi­tioned to help the Unit­ed States grap­ple with author Kadish’s dis­cov­ery that Pro­to­cols was only the best remem­bered of a suc­ces­sion of hoax­es attack­ing racial, eth­nic, and reli­gious minori­ties in Amer­i­ca. For near­ly two hun­dred years, media hoax­es, bogus sci­ence, and doc­tored his­to­ries sought to ​“prove” either racial infe­ri­or­i­ty or the exis­tence of con­spir­a­cies against white Chris­t­ian dom­i­nance. They were man­u­fac­tured by politi­cians, cler­gy, schol­ars, and enter­tain­ers as often for per­son­al prof­it as for group advan­tage. These hoax­es tar­get­ed Jews, African Amer­i­cans, Native Amer­i­cans, Irish Catholics, and immi­grants from Chi­na, and South­ern and East­ern Europe. They have rocked mul­ti­ple pres­i­den­tial elec­tions, and helped shape major Amer­i­can poli­cies and insti­tu­tions. A pre-his­to­ry of our present post-truth cri­sis, The Great White Hoax spans the start of this phe­nom­e­non in the 1830s through its descent under­ground in the lat­er twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry and its recent dan­ger­ous reemer­gence in new forms.