An Open Letter to the ADL, StopAntisemitism, and Canary Mission

I officially walked away from antisemitism in February, after fourteen years as one of the more prominent antisemites on the internet. I’ve spent the last several months correcting the record—debunking the beliefs I used to hold in hopes that others realize the truth. I’ve also spent a lot of time talking with Jewish people: rabbis, Zionists, and people across the whole range of opinion. What’s in this letter came out of those conversations.

I’m writing to you because your organizations know who I am. I was on your lists, my words and actions were documented, and I was labeled accordingly. You used your freedom of speech to counter my freedom of speech. That’s fair. You also used your influence to reduce access to finances and reduce my reach on certain platforms. That’s within your rights too; you can ask others to boycott me.

So, why would I want to help you fight antisemitism now?

I want to help because I’ve seen what it does. It hurts Jewish people, and it also cost me fourteen years of my life, hurting friends and family I cared about. I also care about what’s true, and many of the things I believed weren’t. The claims I defended fell apart when I actually went back to check. I’ve seen the inside of these belief systems in a way your analysts can’t. So let me talk about my experience and what may have prevented it from ever happening.

My journey into antisemitism started in 2012. I was a young veteran trying to make sense of my world, learning everything I could after feeling betrayed by my government. This led me into the world of conspiracy theories, which inevitably led to antisemitic ones, and to reading Mein Kampf along with dozens of other such texts. I repeated things I found persuasive, and I said them in public. Nobody had ever walked me through why any of it was false.

It was when I went public that I started getting called names, being labeled, and put on lists. Here’s what labels tell someone in that position. They don’t say, “This is false.” They say, “This is forbidden!” And “forbidden” implies there’s something there to hide. Instead of an answer, I got confirmation—not that I was wrong, but that I was over the target.

And it wasn’t only the label. It was what the label produced—the lost income, the lost reach. That’s the moment the door shut, and that’s when I became a true believer.

I’ll tell you honestly: after that, nothing you could’ve done would’ve worked. Every sanction was a credential. Every list was proof. If I was lying, why was anyone bothering to silence me? I used that argument myself. In fact, it’s the same argument extremists have always used. It’s the kind of argument that recruits people, because it’s a hard argument to answer when the only reply is more enforcement.

So, there were two windows. In the first one, I was reachable, and information probably would have worked. In the second, nothing would have. The label arrived in the first window—the one where it does the most damage and achieves the least.

Had someone in 2012 said, “What you’re repeating is an antisemitic trope; here is the specific material on where it comes from and why it’s false,” I may never have become extreme at all. I can’t prove that. But I know what the alternative produced, because I lived in it for fourteen years.

What I’d most like you to consider, because it’s about effectiveness rather than fairness: when you take down a prominent antisemite, you remove a supplier, but you don’t remove the demand. The antisemite, when debanked, deplatformed, doxxed, or fired, is seen as a martyr, reinforcing the belief that Jews run everything. The antisemite, now with “street credit,” comes back stronger. But even if he does quit, within a week there’s another to replace him, and the audience is still there. If enforcement were reducing the belief, the replacements wouldn’t find anyone waiting. Yet they always do. That replacement rate is the clearest evidence that the strategy isn’t achieving its goal.

Most of the people who were funding and supporting me were anonymous followers. They weren’t the people saying things out loud. Your enforcement is calibrated to stop those who are seen and heard. But the loud ones are the symptom: the money and the belief sit with people who have never said a word in public and never will. This is who your methods cannot reach, by design, because the whole point of those methods is to make people stop talking.

Every claim that can’t be said without destruction is a claim that goes unanswered in public. The question doesn’t disappear; it just stops being asked where you can hear it. And then the only people still answering it are antisemites, because they’re the only ones willing to engage with it at all. So, who do you think will win the person over? The antisemites, because they’re the only ones willing to have the conversation and answer the person’s questions.

This is why debunking is crucial.

You have the documents, the researchers, the actual answers to the specific claims that recruit people. I don’t know why they aren’t used in the one exchange where you’d have the better material, but when they aren’t, the argument goes to people who can’t win it on the merits.

I’d also ask you to look at your own numbers. The ADL’s 2025 Audit recorded 6,274 incidents, down a third from the year before. Campus incidents fell by two-thirds. Meanwhile assaults rose—assaults involving a deadly weapon went from 23 to 32—and the J7 task force, which the ADL co-founded, called 2025 the deadliest year for antisemitic attacks in the diaspora in over thirty years.

One year proves nothing by itself. But what would you expect those numbers to look like if a strategy were suppressing public expression without touching private belief?

One of the many reasons I stepped away is that I watched the JQ movement stop caring whether a claim was true—only whether it hurt Jews or Israel—and the tent kept getting bigger to make room for anyone who’d repeat it. The conspiracy theory claiming Israel killed Charlie Kirk was the icing on the cake.

There’s also the rise in violence against Jews. I was never violent, and I always condemned violence. But I called Jews demons, rats, and parasites. Once you’ve convinced someone that a group isn’t human, condemning violence doesn’t count for much—somebody can decide to act on what you told them. I didn’t want to be part of that. I knew I took my speech and theatrics too far, and part of why I’m doing all this now is to make things right. But my good intentions aren’t enough to make a difference on their own; information in this information war is the only thing that will.

In my experience, going after only public figures doesn’t tackle antisemitism at its roots. Antisemitic beliefs have to be confronted early, when someone has just picked them up and they haven’t crystallized yet. I don’t think censorship or other means of control can do that, especially because they feed into stereotypes about Jewish power.

And there’s what this does to the words themselves. If everything offensive is antisemitism, then nothing is; and if everyone is an antisemite, then nobody is. Even Kenneth Stern, who drafted the definition the IHRA version is built on, has objected to it being used to police speech. When a label lands on someone who repeated something they didn’t understand, it stops being a warning and becomes an opinion, and it’s worth nothing on the day somebody actually dangerous comes along.

And then there’s what it does to the person. Suddenly they’re outed, and their life is destroyed. When they look for the cause, they find out a Jewish organization contacted their employer. They’ve been told that Jews have the power to destroy people’s lives, and then they experience it. Now, it’s no longer a conspiracy theory to them. The antisemites say, “See, we told you.” The person who wasn’t an antisemite before becomes one.

That’s not two sides. That’s one chain, and it has a link in it that’s under your control. This outcome can be avoided by a simple method: separate the claim from the person, and deal with the claim first.

“This person is repeating an antisemitic trope, and here’s the material on why it’s false” is a statement about a claim. It can be checked, and it gives the person an off-ramp. If they read it and stop, you were right, and you got the outcome your organizations exist to produce.

Notice I said “stops,” not “apologizes.” A forced apology is a demonstration of power over a person, and to someone who already believes you hold that power over people’s lives, it’s proof rather than correction. In my experience, a person who actually changes their mind apologizes on their own. But even if they don’t, the problem is still solved. The most important thing is that the behavior stops.

“This person is a vicious antisemite” is a statement about who someone is. There’s nothing to do with it except accept it or fight it, and someone who doesn’t believe it about themselves will fight it, which means walking straight toward the people who told them this would happen.

I’m not asking you to abandon naming someone an antisemite but to use it only when there’s no choice. If you supply the material first and the person reads it and keeps going, you now have a case nobody can answer: “We gave them the documents, and they continued.” That’s a far stronger public position than a label applied cold, and you get it by waiting rather than by giving anything up.

I’m also aware that each of your organizations has a limited capacity, and not every person is reachable. Some antisemites know exactly what they’re doing and don’t care, and your organizations have every right to act accordingly.

I was a true believer who didn’t wake up until I saw the fallacies of my own beliefs. A Jewish man named Jake Turx reached out to have coffee. He and I talked man to man. I could bring up any lingering belief I had, no matter how taboo, and he challenged it—kindly, and with the information I lacked. Meeting a Jew like him showed me that walking away had been the right call.

That’s all I’m asking for, and one man did it over a cup of coffee. He went after the claim and left the person alone.

Nobody tried anything like this in 2012, when it would have cost one conversation. The one time it was tried, it worked. Unfortunately, it happened fourteen years later than it needed to.

I want to say something about Canary Mission specifically.

After I left, they asked if I’d like to write a piece for them explaining what changed. I did (here).They read it and published it, and they took me off their list. They decided that a listing shouldn’t be permanent and that a man who had changed should be able to show it. That took one person reading one document and making a call. Many antisemites believe there’s no way back once their lives are ruined. Many Jews believe an antisemite never really changes. That’s the same belief from two directions, and the olive branch is what disproves it both ways. This is what I meant in February when I talked about building bridges between communities.

I’m not telling you how to run your organizations. I’m here to help the people fighting antisemitism understand how antisemites think, while also showing other people why your organizations do what they do.

The best way to reduce antisemitism, in my view, is also the way that stops creating more antisemites out of people who are misguided by misinformation and conspiracy theories. That’s how all of our communities become better informed and safer.

But that kind of safety seems to be at risk. In a country built on free speech, lists, doxxing, debanking, deplatforming, and pressure on employers feel like Soviet Russia. To a people who were hunted within living memory, dehumanization, claims of deportation, violence, and in worse cases calls for extermination feel like Nazi Germany.

Obviously, these are not the same thing: losing your livelihood isn’t anything like being killed. But both sides are hearing the other through the worst thing that ever happened to them, and each time that happens, the other side gets more certain it was right.

I hope you take my advice seriously, and that it shapes how you fight antisemitism from here—more toward prevention than reaction.

If any of this is useful, I’m happy to talk further.

Sincerely,

Lucas Gage