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🌊 The True Story of the Zizian Cult
And how a group of transgender Berkeley students became wanted for murder
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By Max Towey
On Inauguration Day, a border patrol agent was shot and killed on the Vermont-Canada border. At first, it appeared to have been a traffic stop gone wrong. Since then, though, it’s emerged that it likely wasn’t a one-off killing, but just the latest in a series of violent actions allegedly taken by a transgender vegan cult known as the Zizians.
In today’s deep-dive, we tell the story of the Zizians, beginning with the arrest of four Guy Fawkes mask-wearing protesters in Berkeley, California in 2019.
It all started at that Berkeley protest.
On November 18, 2019, Sonoma County authorities got a call about a bizarre demonstration outside a retreat center in the woods. Four people wearing black robes and Guy Fawkes masks were blocking a road that led to a venue where Berkeley’s Center for Applied Rationality was holding an alumni reunion. A Roca reader DM’ed us to say his grandmother was the manager of the venue at the time. She recalled the day vividly – particularly when the SWAT descended upon the camp.
The Center for Applied Rationality is essentially the headquarters of American rationalism, a school of thought that dates back to Descartes. Rationalism has experienced a resurgence and rebrand in Silicon Valley. In Descartes’ time, rationalists argued that all thinking should be based on reason and exclude the senses, religion, and emotion. Today, however, it emphasizes the power of technology and the human mind. It’s become popular among atheist tech types like disgraced FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Effective altruism, SBF’s undermining philosophy, is considered an offshoot of rationalism.
Ziz – birth name Jack LaSota – was also a rationalist.
At the time of the protest, Ziz had a blog called “Sinceriously.” She wrote it as if in a constant feverish state, with often incoherent and bizarre posts. She viewed herself as a misunderstood supervillain, often comparing herself to a Sith Lord in Star Wars. She also wrote extensively about transgenderism, veganism, psychology, and artificial intelligence.
In one post about watching The Office, she wrote, “I realized that I was no longer able to stand people. Not even rationalists anymore. And I would live the rest of my life completely alone, hiding my reaction to anyone it was useful to interact with. I had given up my ability to see beauty so I could see evil.” Another was titled, “My Journey to the Dark Side.”
At the time of the protest, Ziz was beefing with the rationalists in the Bay Area, including the Center for Applied Rationality, which had excommunicated her over her behavior, including threats. Ziz considered the center transphobic and oblivious to the danger of AI, which posed an existential threat according to Ziz. These disagreements led Ziz to create a radical offshoot of rationalists who were vegan, gender fluid, and fully appreciative of AI’s threat and the “zombies” who run the US.
Ziz’s protest in the woods ended with her and her three friends arrested. The police – who described them as incoherent and uncooperative – quickly released them. They had no idea what the Zizians were about to do.
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Editor’s Note
A change of pace today from the constant updates on political and diplomatic stories. Let us know if you liked this one and we’ll be sure to do more like it.
In the meantime, here are the past five stories if you missed them:
And some reader replies on that Yemen story:
PJ wrote:
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE "NO MORE FOREIGN WARS" PRESIDENT? IT'S TAKEN HIM LESS THAN TWO MONTHS TO START A FOREIGN WAR!
Jake wrote:
Trump is no different than any other president since Carter in terms of our continuous Fool's Errand of foreign policy in the Middle East. Doing the bidding of defense contractors, Israel lobbyists, and neoconservatives comes first, America second.
And Wilson wrote:
What Trump is doing is smart. Houthis are hurting the global economy, threatening America and its allies, and costing us money by hurling rockets at ships in the Red Sea. Seems like an easy W for the US with a low risk to our troops.
That’s all for today. Send in your thoughts on today’s story, and see you tomorrow!
–Max and Max