Part I: The Archaeology
By age twelve, your political operating system is encoded. Everything after is confirmation bias with better vocabulary.
This is not cynicism. This is archaeology. Dig into any fifty-year-old's beliefs and you will find layers deposited at the kitchen table, in the schoolyard, at church or synagogue or mosque, in the neighborhood where they learned who was "us" and who was "them." The variables were set by what their parents feared, what their parents hoped, whether institutions protected or persecuted, and what happened to people who looked like them.
The internet did not change this. The internet weaponized it. Every search is a mirror. Every feed is an echo. Every algorithm is grandmother's wisdom at scale-optimized for engagement, not truth.
I am eighty-three years old. I have spent seven decades confirming what I knew-or what I didn't know-by age twelve. And only now, with a great-grandchild on the way, do I understand what my parents actually encoded in me.
They encoded silence.
Part II: The Name
My parents were born in 1911. Their parents fled Russia, carrying with them the terror of pogroms and the knowledge that their children, and their children's children, would forever be targets. My mother and father understood this in their bones. And so they made a choice-a choice born of love, shaped by fear, and sealed in silence.
They gave me a name that wouldn't mark me. Demsey. Not obviously Jewish. Not a flag planted on my forehead announcing what I was. They wanted me to succeed in America without carrying the burden of antisemitism. They believed-or hoped-that my days would be different from theirs, that the old hatreds would fade in the New World.
They never had the conversation with me. The one about what it means to be Jewish, about the 5,000 years of wisdom and persecution that lived in our blood. They remained silent and hopeful. They passed away thirty years ago, and yet somehow they knew about today-they just couldn't bring themselves to say it.
Here is what they encoded in me by age twelve: You are different, but don't let anyone know. You can succeed if you don't draw attention. Safety comes from invisibility. The world is dangerous for people like us, so don't be visibly like us.
I spent seventy years running that operating system without examining its source code.
Part III: The Paper of Record
On November 21, 1922, The New York Times published its first article about Adolf Hitler. The piece noted his ability to work crowds into a frenzy and acknowledged his antisemitism-then promptly dismissed it. A "sophisticated politician" was quoted explaining that Hitler was "merely using anti-Semitic propaganda as bait to catch masses of followers." The Times reassured readers that his Jew-hatred was just political theater.
Less than a year later came the Beer Hall Putsch. Then came the war.
From September 1939 to May 1945-nearly six years-the Times published nearly 1,200 articles about what we now call the Holocaust. One every other day. They knew. They had the information. Their thirty correspondents stationed across Europe fed them detailed, accurate accounts of anti-Semitic laws, death from disease and starvation in ghettos, mass executions in Nazi-occupied Russia, and mass gassings in Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Maidanek.
Of those 1,200 stories, only 26 made the front page out of 24,000 front-page stories published during that period. In only six were Jews identified as the primary victims. The rest were buried in the back pages, next to the soap and shoe polish advertisements.
In November 1942, the Times ran a story with the headline: "HIMMLER PROGRAM KILLS POLISH JEWS: Slaughter of 250,000 In Plan To Wipe Out Half of Country This Year Is Reported." Every horror was laid out-the shootings, the forced starvation, the Warsaw ghetto reduced from 433,000 to 40,000, the plan for "complete liquidation." This report, in which every horror of the Holocaust was available for the world to witness, was so important that it made it to page 10.
Page 10. Next to the shoe polish.
The publisher of the Times was Arthur Hays Sulzberger. He was Jewish. He believed Judaism was a religion, not a race or people-a belief that shaped his reluctance to emphasize the unique targeting of Jews by Hitler's regime. He didn't want his paper to be seen as "a special pleader for the Jews" at a time when antisemitism was common in America. He thought that if you don't emphasize it, maybe they'll leave you alone.
My parents made the same calculation. Sulzberger made it at the most important newspaper in the world. Six million people died while the evidence sat next to the advertisements.
This is what happens when protective silence becomes the operating system of an entire institution.
Part IV: The Numbers
The Anti-Defamation League recorded 9,354 antisemitic incidents in the United States in 2024-the highest level ever recorded in their forty-six-year history. This represents a 344% increase over five years. An 893% increase over ten years. Globally, the Combat Antisemitism Movement documented a 107.7% increase from 2023 alone.
These are not abstractions. In December, a mass shooting at Sydney's Bondi Beach during a Hanukkah celebration killed at least fifteen people, including Rabbi Eli Schlanger. Australian intelligence traced earlier arson attacks on Jewish institutions directly to Iran. In Washington D.C., two Israeli Embassy staffers were shot and killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum. In Manchester, England, a man rammed his car into a crowd outside a synagogue on Yom Kippur and went on a stabbing spree.
College campuses have become epicenters. An 84% increase in incidents-1,694 total-comprising nearly one in five of all reported cases nationwide. Thirty-five percent of American Jewish college students report experiencing antisemitism at least once during their time on campus.
The ideological sources have shifted. Far-left incidents surged 324.8% compared to 2023, now comprising 68.4% of all recorded incidents. Far-right incidents dropped by 54.8%, though they remain a threat. For the first time in ADL history, a majority of antisemitic incidents-58%-included elements related to Israel or Zionism.
The hatred comes from multiple wells now. It no longer matters which political tribe you belong to-there's someone ready to hate you on both sides.
For the first time, 13% of American Jews said they have considered leaving the United States due to antisemitism. Fifty-six percent report changing their behavior out of fear-up from 38% just two years ago.
My parents knew. Born in 1911, they knew. They just thought silence would protect me from it.
Part V: Following the Money
I asked who funds the rise of antisemitism. The answer is layered and disturbing.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism, antisemitism, and Holocaust denial. They fund a massive multilingual propaganda machine to the tune of $1 billion annually. The New York-based Alavi Foundation spreads Iranian regime influence throughout the United States with its multimillion-dollar budget, funding mosques and entities that disseminate Tehran's viewpoint.
The funding trail uses layers of "cut outs" to conceal state involvement. When Australian intelligence traced the Melbourne synagogue arson attacks to Iran, they found the criminals likely didn't even know Tehran was their puppet master.
Domestically, various foundations serve as fiscal sponsors for campus organizations, allowing groups without tax-exempt status to receive anonymous donations. The Emergent Fund openly claimed it "showed up for Palestinian, Muslim, and Jewish organizers demanding #CeasefireNow with over $330,000 to mobilize thousands of protesters." By April 2024, that number had risen to $500,000.
But funding is only part of the infrastructure. The algorithms do the rest-sorting, amplifying, targeting. The hatred has industrial backing and technological distribution. It scales in ways my grandparents' persecutors could never have imagined.
Part VI: Three Words
If we reduce political identity to its minimum, we arrive at three words:
Safety - Whose? From what? Guaranteed by whom?
Fairness - Defined how? For whom? Measured how?
Belonging - Who is "us"? What must "they" do to qualify?
These three words explain ninety percent of political conflict. Everything else is commentary.
My parents' operating system prioritized Safety through invisibility, Fairness through assimilation, and Belonging through not drawing attention to difference. They believed-or hoped-that if you made yourself small enough, quiet enough, invisible enough, they'd leave you alone.
Arthur Hays Sulzberger ran the same operating system at the most powerful newspaper in the world. Safety through not seeming too Jewish. Fairness through not being "a special pleader." Belonging through proving you're American first.
They don't leave you alone. They never have. The 9,354 incidents prove it. The 893% increase proves it. The 56% changing their behavior proves it. Silence doesn't provide safety-it just means they come for you without anyone noticing.
Part VII: The Inheritance
I have been envious of friends who actually received guidance from their parents, who got the heart-to-heart conversation I never had. My mother and father absorbed two world wars and two depressions and still believed-or hoped-that my days might be different. And for much of my life, they were right. Not perfect, but better. The American Jewish experience was, for decades, the exception.
That exception is eroding.
I recently became a great-grandfather. Given the trajectory of the moment, what operating system will she inherit?
If I remain silent, she inherits what I inherited: confusion about who she is, no framework for understanding why people might hate her, no preparation for carrying herself through it. She will spend decades-as I did-running an operating system she never examined, confirming what she absorbed by age twelve, fed by algorithms optimized for engagement rather than truth.
Or I can give her something different.
She will need to know: the 5,000 years of wisdom, the honesty and principles that live in our DNA, the unbroken strand that survived Russia and the Holocaust and will survive this-that's not a burden. That's her inheritance.
She will need to know that Ahmed al Ahmed, a Muslim father of two, tackled the Bondi shooter. That a Russian-Jewish couple died trying to stop the attack before it started. That people left flowers outside the burned bakery. That the hatred is real, but so is the solidarity.
She will need to know that "Heinini"-Here I am-is not na ve. It's defiance. It's the answer to 5,000 years of people who wanted her people gone.
She will need to know that protective silence failed. That the paper of record buried the Holocaust next to shoe polish. That her great-great-great-grandparents' flight from Russia was not ancient history but prologue.
She will need the conversation my parents couldn't give me.
Part VIII: A Message to the Tech Titans
As the New York Times was complicit in the rise of Hitler-knowing everything, publishing it on page 10-so are you complicit in the rise of the "isms" that are tearing this world apart.
The billions you are spending to build tomorrow are funded by the advances of technology, some of which are harmful. There is no need for me to point them out. You already know. You are already aware of the dangers, already trying to limit access to and outputs of your chatbots, already building guardrails and content moderation systems and trust and safety teams.
You look for the bad guys. But are you doing enough?
Absolutely not!
I pay for your mistakes. All of your users pay for your mistakes. The algorithms you built to maximize engagement have maximized hatred. The platforms you created to connect humanity have sorted humanity into tribes and fed each tribe exactly what it already believed, amplified to industrial scale. The tools you designed to inform have been weaponized to inflame.
I have written several articles pointing out that I pay for your mistakes-that we all do. The 893% increase in antisemitic incidents over ten years did not happen in a vacuum. It happened on your platforms, amplified by your algorithms, funded by your advertising models.
Someday I'll be smart enough to figure out your precise role in the perpetuation of the "isms." The exact mechanism by which your engagement optimization became hatred optimization. The specific point at which connecting people became sorting people became targeting people.
Neither of us may live long enough for that reckoning.
But history will judge you as it judged Arthur Hays Sulzberger. You knew. You had the data-more data than any institution in human history. You published it on the equivalent of page 10, buried beneath the engagement metrics and the quarterly earnings reports. And when the fire came, you arrived too late, disclaiming responsibility, pointing to your trust and safety investments as if a fire extinguisher excuses arson.
The paper of record failed because it prioritized not seeming partial over telling the truth. You are failing because you prioritize engagement over safety, growth over responsibility, tomorrow's billions over today's harms.
You have built the most powerful information infrastructure in human history. What are you doing with it?
Part IX: The Next Institution
We Jewish people have been at this for generations. We have the guidance of a Torah unchanged for thousands of years, even as interpretation has evolved. The values of my parents are unflinchingly my values today. The operating system is resilient because it was written down, passed on, examined, argued over, and transmitted. It survived because it was not silent.
I have long held that you cannot change people's behavior. The archaeology is set by age twelve. The algorithm feeds them exactly what they already believe. I am not writing this article to change antisemites.
I am writing this article for the next institution.
The New York Times knew everything and buried it next to the shoe polish. The algorithms know everything and optimize for engagement over truth. And now AI knows everything-every pattern, every data point, every historical rhyme. The question is: what will it do with that knowledge?
The Times was too late. They had 1,200 stories and published them on page 10. By the time the camps were liberated, six million were dead. The institution knew. The institution failed.
Will AI be different? Or will it be another Sulzberger-knowing everything, saying nothing that matters, arriving at the scene after the fire has already consumed the building?
Without solving the problems of the "isms"-antisemitism, racism, all the hatreds encoded at kitchen tables and amplified by algorithms-AI will be a voice too late for protection. Knowledge without action is complicity. The paper of record failed. The algorithms are failing. AI will fail too unless it confronts the pattern before it's too late.
This is not a plea for AI to save us. It is a warning: the next institution is being built right now, and if it inherits the operating system of protective silence, it will repeat the same failure at unprecedented scale.
Part X: The Task
The hero's task is not to eliminate bias. That is impossible. Every one of us carries the archaeology of our first twelve years.
The hero's task is to make the bias visible.
I have spent my career building things. RemoteNet Corporation. Database systems. Now, at eighty-three, an AI safety platform called Hallucinations.cloud-eight models queried simultaneously, cross-validating each other, showing where they agree and where they diverge. The algorithm doesn't cure prejudice. The algorithm diagnoses it. That's the beginning, not the end.
But technology is not enough. The operating system must be examined. The source code must be made visible. The silence must be broken.
I have lived by a simple philosophy: "Don't lament. Engage." My parents chose protection over visibility. They chose silence and hope. I understand why. I love them for it. But I cannot continue it.
The trajectory demands something different. It demands truth and preparation. It demands the conversation my parents couldn't give me, written down for those who come after.
It's No Secret Anymore
You can mitigate antisemitism. You can deter it, respond to it. But stopping it entirely remains elusive. The data shows we're failing at containment right now. The baker who held on for two years finally said he could no longer stay. The 13% considering leaving. The 56% changing their behavior.
I am not leaving. I am not hiding. I am not silent.
My name is Brian Demsey. My parents chose it so I could pass. I am eighty-three years old, a dreamer not a programmer, a founder and builder, a great-grandfather.
And I am Jewish.
My tribe has already been chosen for me. I am done pretending otherwise.
It's no secret anymore.
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Brian Demsey is the founder and CEO of Hallucinations.cloud LLC, an AI safety company focused on detecting misinformation through multi-model cross-validation. He has over fifty years of enterprise experience and has written extensively for The Information. He lives in South Dakota.
5ooo Years of Wisdom
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNbR5Ck3Nj8
The Australian
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/abc-slammed-for-biased-reporting/video/bdb25d3d-f0d2d31c776588b6496151d3