16 Oct 2023 5:15 am
This databases grew out of a 1994 book by Laird Wilcox.
Part of the foreword is below, with the rest at the link.
This book grew out of a research project I began in 1988 when the issue of racist and anti-Semitic hoaxes first came to my attention in a serious way. I had learned in talking with a former associate in the civil rights movement of the 1960s that a cross-burning I had always assumed was done by white racists was, in fact, done by civil rights workers.
This aroused my curiosity, and more extensive probing convinced me that it may not be an uncommon occurrence. I quickly discovered that there were almost no sources of information on the subject of racist and anti-Semitic hoaxes. Rightwing groups, whom one might suspect would keep tabs on this, were rendered almost useless by their conspiratorial approach to the subject.
The various black and Jewish groups were reluctant to discuss the issue. It was evidently a subject that had to be researched from scratch. In 1989 I established the "Hoaxer Project" to bring together information on the subject. I managed to collect a number of newspaper clippings and in 1990 published a small report entitled The Hoaxer Project Report.,
Altogether some 5,500 copies of that report were circulated. A few readers began sending me clippings of hoaxes that actually made the newspapers as well as their own accounts of incidents they knew or suspected were hoaxes.
MOre at link. https://fakehatecrimes.org/Crying-Wolf- ... Wilcox.pdf
Part of the foreword is below, with the rest at the link.
This book grew out of a research project I began in 1988 when the issue of racist and anti-Semitic hoaxes first came to my attention in a serious way. I had learned in talking with a former associate in the civil rights movement of the 1960s that a cross-burning I had always assumed was done by white racists was, in fact, done by civil rights workers.
This aroused my curiosity, and more extensive probing convinced me that it may not be an uncommon occurrence. I quickly discovered that there were almost no sources of information on the subject of racist and anti-Semitic hoaxes. Rightwing groups, whom one might suspect would keep tabs on this, were rendered almost useless by their conspiratorial approach to the subject.
The various black and Jewish groups were reluctant to discuss the issue. It was evidently a subject that had to be researched from scratch. In 1989 I established the "Hoaxer Project" to bring together information on the subject. I managed to collect a number of newspaper clippings and in 1990 published a small report entitled The Hoaxer Project Report.,
Altogether some 5,500 copies of that report were circulated. A few readers began sending me clippings of hoaxes that actually made the newspapers as well as their own accounts of incidents they knew or suspected were hoaxes.
MOre at link. https://fakehatecrimes.org/Crying-Wolf- ... Wilcox.pdf