NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE {T} he Italians have a classic aphorism: Se non è vero, è ben trovato. Even if it is not true, it is well conceived.

This has evidently become comedian Hasan Minhaj’s personal credo, as he has recently been caught fabricating incidents of racial discrimination (he’s a Muslim of Indian descent) for both his stand-up comedy bits and his former television show Patriot Act.

The New Yorker found that a story Minhaj told about receiving a white powder in the mail at his home, forcing him to take his daughter to the hospital, never happened. Minhaj also fabricated a story in which he met a famous FBI informant who had infiltrated his mosque; but the informant, Craig Monteilh, never worked anywhere near Minhaj’s hometown.

And Minhaj has frequently told a story about asking a white woman to prom, only to show up at her house and see a white boy putting a corsage on her wrist. He said the girl’s parents did not want her being photographed with a “brown boy,” fearing their relatives would disapprove.

But the woman has debunked the whole story and said she has faced online threats from fans who have figured out her identity. She, in fact, is now engaged to an Indian man. (This Minhaj falsehood exposes the irony of his shtick: His false tale of being a victim has created a legitimate victim.)

Minhaj has defended making up the stories, telling the New Yorker that they represent “emotional truths” — an oleaginous term comedians well below Minhaj’s status would easily rip to shreds. For those keeping track, “emotionally true” is shorthand for “not actually true at all.”

Of course, when you go to a comedy show, you don’t expect the full truth. When comedian Steven Wright says he doesn’t have to walk his dog anymore because he walked him “all at once,” a fact-checker isn’t on site to disprove it.

But in his various shows, Minhaj has adopted the role of “discrimination truth-teller” — highlighting racial unfairness through personal experience. As one writer who worked for The Daily Show said, “so much of the appeal of those stories is ‘This really happened.’”

Minhaj is trying to meet a demand for victims when the supply of actual victims is low. To earn respect and cultural gravitas today, one need not be particularly funny (Minhaj is middling at best) or smart or skilled. Just having the right people attack you is enough for people who think like you to rush to your defense and boost your profile.

This doesn’t even have to be a racial phenomenon. Former president Donald Trump has been charged with 91 separate felony counts (some more serious than others) but has managed to turn his whole legal imbroglio into a debate over whether he is being unfairly targeted by his political opponents. In fact, much of Trump’s strategy over the past several years has been to do outrageous things that cause Democrats and Never Trumpers — the people his supporters despise — to attack him. Then he plays the victim and experiences a surge in popularity.

And with social media now in every corner of our lives, regular people are inventing victimhood in order to stoke outrage clicks. Remember the white San Francisco–area “momfluencer” who took to social media to claim a Latino couple had followed her around a store and then attempted to kidnap her children in the parking lot? Store surveillance footage exposed the whole thing as a hoax. Earlier this year, she was sentenced to 90 days in jail.

Clearly, we have traded in talent and competence for “someone was mean to me.”

The victim card has even been played by supporters of Colorado representative Lauren Boebert, who last week was caught on film providing some “Levi lovin’” to her beau during a public performance of the musical Beetlejuice. Boebert’s colleague, Florida representative Matt Gaetz, defended her by saying she faces “relentless attacks from the media and the Left” because she is an “effective” legislator.

But the greatest growth industry is that of the fake hate crime, which can provide media attention and sympathy for attention-seekers like Minhaj. He is basically comedy’s version of Jussie Smollett, the gay black actor who preposterously suggested he was beaten by Donald Trump supporters on the streets of Chicago in the early hours of a sub-zero winter morning. (And whose ridiculous case was immediately championed by people like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, who called the hoax a “lynching.”)

Hate-crime hoaxes are everywhere. Remember when black NASCAR driver Bubba Wallace surged to national fame because someone falsely claimed that a noose had been hung up in a garage at the Talladega speedway? Or when Brigham Young University officials had to debunk complaints by a Duke volleyball player that a fan had called her racial slurs?

In fact, the College Fix has documented dozens of incidents on campuses over the past few years in which alleged “hate crimes” were debunked. They range anywhere from fake chalk markings threatening LGBTQ students at MIT (actually drawn by the student-body president, who wanted the “administration to know the tax they impose on marginalized communities”) to a black woman throwing a rock through the window of the Black Student Cultural Center at the University of Virginia.

Much of the campus culture of victimhood is perpetuated by the constantly swelling diversity, equity, and inclusion staffs at colleges around America. The gambit is easy to spot: DEI counselors exist to make students of color feel that their presence on campus necessarily makes them victims, which then necessitates the hiring of more DEI counselors. It is more of a jobs program than it is a genuine attempt to ameliorate (supposed) racial discord or discrimination on campus.

As my colleague Erec Smith (himself an African-American former diversity officer) has written in these pages, racial discrimination is big business for the groups that purport to fight it, so they try to keep it going to further justify their existence. This can encourage hoaxes, but it also shifts the definition of “racism” — such as when the University of Wisconsin-Madison removed a boulder from campus because activists found one instance from 1925 in which someone in a news article in the local paper referred to the rock by the N-word.

Whether it’s fake stories peddled by Hasan Minhaj or campus race hoaxes, the actual victims are the people who experience real racial bias. Certainly, hate crimes still exist, but every report of bias or discrimination is now met with eye-rolls and snorts because we have been fooled too many times. The people who fabricate their struggle for clicks and cash are the ones downplaying the legitimate complaints made by others.

In America, attention is now the coin of the realm. If the right person is mean to you, it can mean a ticket to stardom. When we confer benefits on those who concoct stories of victimhood, we will no doubt get more of the same.