Andy Ngo: Cults, Human Experiments & Unsolved Murders Surrounding America’s Biggest Tech Oligarchs
1h 39m 29s
The Zizians is a radical cult that emerged from Silicon Valley’s rationalist and effective altruism communities, evolving into a violent extremist group through the fusion of trans ideology, anti-capitalist anarchism, and a belief in "brain hemispheres" as sources of good or evil. Led by Jack Amadeus Lasota, known as "Ziz," the group promoted pseudoscientific theories about trans cognition and conducted dangerous experiments involving sleep deprivation, claiming to "debucket" members' brains. They established isolated communes, lived on boats and in box trucks, and engaged in repeated acts of violence, including the attempted murder and brutal stabbing of an elderly man, Curtis Lint, and the execution-style killings of a couple in Pennsylvania. Despite these crimes, no members have been convicted, and the group has used systemic loopholes—such as fake deaths, name changes, and refusal of mug shot releases—to evade justice. The narrative surrounding the crimes has been distorted by trans activists and media, who falsely framed victims as victims of "trans genocide" and celebrated the group’s actions as part of a moral crusade. This report exposes a deeper pattern of institutional failure: media suppression of facts, legal barriers to identifying suspects, and the use of ideological framing to delegitimize real violence. Ultimately, the Zizians represent a dangerous convergence of radical ideology, unchecked experimentation, and media manipulation, illustrating how extremist movements can exploit both intellectual trends and systemic weaknesses to carry out violence while evading accountability.
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Andy, thank you for doing this.
This is one of the most remarkable stories I've ever heard.
And so I'd love to just start at the beginning.
Congrats on the book.
Who are the Zizians?
The Zizians are a cult that has its origins in Silicon Valley, California.
I first started paying attention to what I then learned.
Parts of the story in January 2025.
That was Inauguration Day.
On Inauguration Day, I saw in the headlines that a U.S. Border Patrol agent had been shot dead.
In Vermont.
In Vermont, right by the Canadian border, very close to the Canadian border.
Of course, with it being Inauguration Day, all of the international and national media coverage
was on what was happening in Vermont.
DC, so it didn't get very much attention.
It was actually not far from that border crossing that day, weirdly, in Vermont, which is not far from here.
So it's a very rural area in the middle of nowhere.
It's icy, cold, super freezing, and two people were dead.
One, the one being one of the alleged shooters, another alleged shooter was injured but survived.
And then the Border Patrol agent, David Christopher Mullen, was ambushed and killed.
So when I looked into that, they were very—
So you're just reading about this.
Yeah, there were very few details.
But then once I found out the names, and I started digging further.
And this is in the context of where I've learned that we should come to expect media malpractice
when it comes to a lot of details about criminal matters, particularly involving—
That's for sure.
Gender and trans.
So you can no longer take—for many years now—take even names and details such as sex at face value when it's being reported.
I learned this, unfortunately, through my reporting on leftist violence over the years,
is that the media will use preferred names, preferred pronouns, preferred aliases for individuals they report on.
Sometimes even on criminal matters.
And so you can have all these stories where there are trans killers involved in violent cases
and read reporting and come out not even knowing that this woman who did this sex crime or did this brutal killing
or did these acts of violence is not a woman but actually a man.
So with the name, I just kept digging further.
Initially, there was a lot of stuff going on.
In DC.
And I found out that, oh, huh, the surviving alleged attempted murderer in that shooting was—
had a—applied for a marriage license in the Seattle area with a man in Seattle who had just been arrested for attempted murder.
Somebody who was an elderly key witness for a murder.
For a attempted murder trial in Solano County, California, which is in the Bay Area.
And then I looked up, oh, that elderly man several years earlier has survived a brutal attack by trans suspects.
He was impaled dozens of times.
He had his eye gouged out in the attack.
And after surviving that, he was assassinated by somebody now who has a connection to this person in Vermont.
And with all these things coming together, I was like, there's way more to the story.
Yes, yes.
And it's not just a simple case of an isolated homicide incident, but rather there appears to be a group involved here.
And that was the start of my investigation.
But I want to back up a little bit.
You know, I have so much gratitude to you because five years ago, you provided a book blurb for my first book.
Unmasked Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy.
And my path from reporting on Antifa to writing about trans violence now on the surface might not seem like there's a connection, but it completely was the logical path.
At that time in 2020, 2021, when there were so many riots going on after George Floyd died.
One of my big projects was documenting those who were getting arrested.
In Portland, where I was living at the time, I, every night through public records, got the booking photos, got the names and looked them up systematically.
And I was seeing that there was a very odd pattern emerging at that time, which is disproportionately the suspects were trans in some way.
They could identify as male to female, female to male.
Or non-binary or some type of neo pronouns.
This was six years ago.
And I just put that thought in the back of my head.
It was a question.
I was like, this is kind of weird.
And you might recall that in 2019, I was brutally beaten in downtown Portland reporting on Antifa.
And a lot of people are familiar with that case.
I suffered a subarachnoid brain hemorrhage from that.
And the people who did it were dressed in black block with their faces covered.
And Portland police closed the case without arresting anybody.
But I pursued a civil case against individuals I had alleged that were party to that attack and/or an attack that happened also in 2021.
I was attacked repeatedly in Portland, which is also part of the reason why I've been in exile abroad, living in England now for all these years.
The individuals I was able to identify in my civil lawsuit with the help of Harmeet Dhillon is three of the six individuals are trans-identifying.
So at that time, there was like this other. Half.
Exactly.
Another point of like, what's going on with like all this trans violence?
And in the years since, we've had atrocity after atrocity, shooting after shooting.
Not just in the United States, but other Western countries where the shooters are trans.
And so it was within this context now, you see now that I explain it, why when I initially found out the names of the individuals who are alleged to have been involved in that ambush shooting in the Vermont border police officer.
I was like, this is, I'm not taking it at face value that it was just a man and a woman who were allegedly involved.
Everything requires further digging.
And once I found some of the puzzle pieces, I realized this is material for a book, not just an article.
Because it was so much.
I then learned about this is a cult now who has its roots in effective altruism, rationalism.
But then they, as they became radicalized, they pulled in bits and pieces.
Of other beliefs like trans ideology, trans humanism, leftist, anarchist politics.
And they were a cult that recruited in the Bay Area and they're alleged to have been linked now to eight violent deaths in the United States and also in another country.
So there's a trail of bodies and the Zizians is a two year investigation.
A year and a half investigation.
The Zizians is a year and a half investigation into what I discovered, the secrets of the group, the ideology.
And the more I kept digging in, it became more and more gruesome and disturbing.
And I've seen a lot of very ugly, horrific things in my time reporting on the violent far left.
I've experienced it myself.
I've seen people who have been maimed.
Unfortunately, it was around deadly violence in Portland in 2020.
So I thought I was prepared for what I would find.
But this cult used human experimentation.
They had hideouts across the US.
They made their own labs in sort of like medical environments in the hideouts where they had.
They administered their own hormones and medication.
So the Zizians is really a story of what happens when rampant cross-sex hormone use, radical ideology.
protection from media and institutions, all these things merging together then
allowed a cult to allegedly carry out deadly violence over the course of nearly a decade now.
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Where does it begin? Who led the cult?
I'll start with the person that ended up being the leader. So on the cover, this picture is from
the mugshot of Jack Amadeus Lasota. He was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, raised in a very liberal
family.
His father was involved in, was and is involved in Democrat politics. But he otherwise had a
somewhat normal upbringing. He had two younger sisters. He was very smart growing up and had an
interest in Dungeons and Dragons and geeky stuff, Star Trek. He was very good at computer science.
That's what he excelled at in school. And he studied at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and
graduated magna.
And then was accepted into a graduate program at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign for their
prestigious engineering program there. Jack, like many of the people who ended up joining the
Zizians, they can be described essentially as geniuses or very brilliant people and who come
from STEM educated backgrounds.
Jack, what's your take on the Zizians?
Yeah, so I mean, I think the Zizians, I think the Zizians were very, very smart people. They were very
smart people. They had a lot of incredible careers. Those with degrees in engineering and bioinformatics.
They include, on their resumes, work stints at NASA and at Google. Some of them were making hundreds of
thousands of dollars a year in quantitative trading. So this was a highly selective, small group of
people and they ended up joining the Zizians.
But back to Ziz, or I should say the Zizians.
Exactly. Jack Lasota, as he was known. When he was a student, he became interested in rationalism,
effective altruism. We're hearing about that a lot now. These are somewhat niche communities that
are quite active in Silicon Valley. Rationalism is just a modern philosophical movement. It has
its origins from centuries ago from European thinkers, but in the modern form. It's about
to simplify using logic, reason, evidence, in the course of seeking and finding truth. And then a related
movement within that is effective altruism, which is using rationalist thinking to maximize good. So in
the Bay Area, a lot of the people who work in tech and AI programming, they're doing a lot of research on
AI programming. They're doing a lot of research on AI
programming. AI programming are involved in rationalism and effective altruism. They are atheists and they believe that, and they're highly educated, they believe that we can find the best ways to maximize good in society. But their whole moral system is different than it's in opposition to, let's say, traditional Christian values or religious morals.
So a lot of their debates were really kind of nonsensical in a way with some of the effective altruists. For example, they spent and still spend a lot of time talking about the welfare of shrimp, prawns. You know, they're thinking that if, for example, if let's say 10% of them have some type of sentience, we're talking about billions and billions of shrimps that are being farmed and they're needlessly farmed.
You know, these aren't Christians. So they view the life of an animal as equal to a human. So these are the type of a lot of these weird debates that were happening in the EA and rationalist community. They were very active online. A lot of them are autistic. A lot of them have Asperger's syndrome. There's a lot of research showing that for those who have Asperger's, this is a small number.
It does correlate at the tail end with really high intelligence as well. So for Jack Lasota, his original research interest when he was at university was studying corona expulsions from the sun. That was the type of research that he was doing at NASA. But he became involved in these online forums and about rationalism and effective altruism.
And he was reading it a lot, like a lot of people. Les Sprong is one.
It was one of the main forums where it was a large community of people discussing all these things I just talked about, debating them endlessly and coming up with mathematical algorithms and models for how this could be the best outcome, that could be the best outcome.
And so he dropped out of his engineering program and moved to Silicon Valley and became involved in the rationalist community there. There were hundreds of them about around 2015.
Thousands that had moved there specifically so that they could get involved in the rationalist community.
And in that backdrop, he met other rationalists who are also very intelligent, and he convinced at least one of them that that person was trans. And he started recruiting people to his particular beliefs.
So eventually, this is ideology.
It was more than just mainstream rationalism and effective altruism.
He started pulling in things like aspects of trans ideology.
In fact, he kept a very active blog online called "Sin Seriously," a portmanteau of sin and seriously.
And on there, he wrote extensively about how he believed that trans people, particularly trans women, have special cognitive abilities.
trans woman has special cognitive abilities. And we're hearing a lot about EA now because there are
the AI engineers and researchers who worked for OpenAI or Anthropic who have spoken out quite
recently and done a lot of media about existential risk, AI existential risk. So even though the
public now is just hearing about this, this has been a debate that's been going on for over a
decade in Silicon Valley. Those who believe that AI is going to become a super intelligent being,
and if it's unaligned to human interests, is going to destroy the world, kill everybody.
So Jack, later Ziz, winds up in Silicon Valley. He's dropped out of school. He's moved there
in order to commune with other rationalists and effective altruists. And while there,
there's been a lot of debate about AI risk. Yeah. The Bay Area has a long history of
weird people going there. And in fact, the Zizians are compared a lot to the Charles Manson cult.
And decades ago, Charles Manson also had his journey moving to the Bay Area and his start
in California before he gathered members to form a cult that murdered nine people. And
Charles Manson himself, and we learned through the trials a long time ago, that he didn't do the
actual killing of anybody, but he influenced other members within his group to carry out these type
of attacks. So if the allegations ultimately are true about Jack Lasota, also known as Ziz,
that's also similar to what he did. So he went through quite a big transformation once he moved
to the Bay Area.
He transitioned, started taking cross sex hormones and testosterone suppressors, met
other trans people. And there were a lot of weird people. And there was also an aspect-
Can I ask you a question? Do we know why he did that? That's a big step.
Within the Zizian ideology, based on his writings on his blog, he believed that trans women in particular had certain special cognitive
abilities. And he believed that all of the world was at an existential risk from AI destroying
everything. And that he thought he could be part of the vanguard of those who would save the world.
That was his world. That was his words. And he'd be more effective living as a woman doing that.
Yes, but he also had this, this is where the trans ideology comes in, in his writings. He
believed that he was also born that way, that trans people were born that way within the brain.
So he misquoted and misused certain research on his blog about trans brains. And I write about
in this book where the research on it actually doesn't show that trans brains on average are
different because some of the research that was done, which did actually measure some average
differences, was looking at people who, males, who were same-sex attracted. And I believe that's
potentially what was being tracked.
In the differences that was being noted, very minor ones on average, rather than the fact that
these were trans people, trans, so-called trans women.
Was he gay before he became trans?
He wrote about experiences that he had sexually with another man on his blog, but otherwise he
described himself in quite asexual terms. He described how he viewed his
sexuality.
I'm gonna stop you right there, Andy, and say, that's not a healthy worldview.
No, no, not at all. And he believed also that, and this is what he wrote about that
going through puberty was like part of his soul dying. So you can see how there are elements
within some of those statements that are kind of repeated in mainstream trans ideology being
born in the wrong body, being born this way. If you prevent, if you allow, for example, a gender
confused boy or girl to go through puberty, that you are setting that child up to a life of
suffering because they're developing into a body that doesn't align with the gender ideology.
Ziz named himself after Ziz, a fictional monster creature from an online fiction
serial. And in that story, the monster influences people to become essentially walking time bombs
that are destructive later. Looking back now, I mean, he picked, Lesotho picked the name almost
a decade ago. I wonder, um, with the people that ended up dying around the group that he formed,
if that name was actually quite intentional or not.
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home of the save. Right here on this show. So he starts living as a woman. Does he take hormones?
He wrote about taking cross-sex hormones and testosterone suppressors. And he met other
trans people. There was an element also in the Bay Area then and now within some in Silicon Valley of
trans as a social contagion of like where just suddenly a whole bunch of people began
transitioning at the same time amongst similar social and friendly circles. So he was developing
his own ideology in parallel and ultimately in opposition to a very well-known rationalist
and effective altruist thinker, Eliezer Yudovsky. And Yudovsky is really seen as like
one of the big forefathers for modern day contemporary rationalism. He has a very large
following. Many people moved to the Bay Area, particularly because of the fact that he was
born and raised in the Bay Area. He has established two non-profits, MIRI, Machine Intelligence Research
Institute, and CIFAR to research AI safety and rationalism. And he's for many, many years most
well-known as one of the big AI doomers. Earlier this year, he met with Vermont Senator Bernie
Sanders and others. So he's been very influential in his career. Ziz was a follower of Yudovsky,
and he eventually believed that Yudovsky wasn't doing enough to save the world. So Ziz then met
another person who he recruited to his cause, Jasper Danielson, who used the name Gwen.
And that was his first recruit. From there, the two of them really established sort of the
groundwork of the Zizians. And it's very big and complicated and hard to explain, but to summarize,
their main theory is that the brain's two hemispheres correspond to different identities.
One can be male, one can be female, it can be different sexes, it can be in opposition to one
another, and they could be good or evil. Ziz, in his writings, describes himself as being
female in the brain, and that both of his hemispheres were good, that he was one of
the exceptionally rare people in the world born with this gift of being double good. So he had
like a whole vocabulary around it. And then his goal then was to find and recruit people to his
ideology and cause, who he believed had at least one good core of the brain. And so in their
point, they believed that they needed to be separated and that they could do it through
experimentations. And this is like the early formings of the cult-like elements of the group.
So people that they were recruiting, so-called trans women, men who identify as women,
they would introduce them to the ideology, let them know how they can be part of this
world-saving mission and being part of this vanguard. But you need to go through
these experimentations. You need to jailbreak yourselves. So Ziz particularly sought out other
rationalists who were trans. And then from there, the line of inquiry would be to try to find out if
they were open to these types of experimentations. And so I documented—
Would they separate the two hemispheres of your brain?
Yes. And the Zizians believed that they could do it through
sleep deprivation. And Ziz very intentionally kept the details,
of how these experimentations were done, secretive. He alluded to some of the steps in his writings,
but never outlined it. And I believe that was part of sort of the intrigue
with the group, was it would get people curious to inquire with them. And some did.
Reading through some of the correspondence that I was able to gather as part of my
investigation for this book, the experimentations was various kinds of sleep deprivation,
and manipulating members into essentially a state of psychosis where they could
be more easily manipulated through the extended sleep deprivation sleep deprivation has been used
by a lot of cults by the way of course in governments exactly so part of what makes like
the story quite unbelievable was the the journey of the zizians from silicon valley and then
ultimately many many years later being arrested in february 2025 in allegheny county rural maryland
in appalachia maryland the citizens incorporated in leftist anarchist politics so they did not
want to submit themselves to the capitalist system and part of that included then
coming up with really bizarre arrangements for how to live their life as essentially a commune so
one of the first projects was establishing a rat fleet rationalist fleet literally buying old boats
and the goal the idea was to live on them so they didn't have to pay rent
and there's lots of really crazy stuff that happened for example
they bought a an old world war ii tugboat from alaska and
rode it all the way drove it all the way down to the bay area but they didn't have
any of the permits to be able to park it at a dock um in uh half moon bay but they they were
allowed to go there on humanitarian grounds because they claimed that they were running
into difficulty and then they became squatters for years and years they stayed there they
recruited people they bought more boats and there were people and then eventually who left the group
and do we have any idea where their money was coming from
yes so ziz himself was bouncing from programming job to programming job and some of the other
members were doing various
other type of part-time employment things as well so they were pouring in their own money
into these projects they really thought that they could create this fleet of rationalists
who would end up saving the world and eventually as you can imagine that whole type of arrangement
ended up collapsing it's unrealistic and so they moved after gathering several members
including one who was a google engineer um amir bohanian who used the name
amir um in 2020 they at the end of 2019 they moved to vallejo california there was a plot
of land from an elderly man that they befriended um when they were in half moon bay by the water
he was very kind to them he helped him a lot uh curtis lint and they lived on his lot and how they
repaid his kindness was they used the laws um under california governor and gavin newsom
related to the pandemic to not pay rent for years so they squatted on his land and it was there that
they did more of these experimentations they live in these box trucks so they lived a really weird life situation
lifestyle that was completely isolated from mainstream society. And in the meantime, two
of the members who had joined their group and then left didn't actually end up escaping
the group's influence. And they killed themselves in very brutal ways. The first victim jumped
off a building in Poland, and then the other person ended his life very violently in Colorado.
And a shotgun through the mouth. So even early on in the Rationalist community at that
time, this was before there were actually any murders with these deaths, there were
rumors that. And this Ziz and his group, there's something odd about it among some of the Rationalists.
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There's a bunch of transgender guys living on a boat, squatting.
And then living on a law. And then people who had crossed paths with them
dying suddenly, taking their own lives.
Yeah, those are all indications. It's not conventional.
Yeah.
And the story of. Violence through here, it just, it continues to escalate. I'll just go through a brief timeline.
There were, by the end, eight known victims. So two people who joined the group ended up
taking their own lives. They had gone through the experimentation. Allegedly,
their brain hemispheres were separated through these forms of sleep deprivation.
The Zizines had a word for it. They called it debucketing. They recruited more people onto this
law. There were at least six of them that were living on the property belonging to the elderly
man. And eventually, he took steps to try to evict them. They didn't pay rent for years. They
originally offered a $2,000 to rent a very large part of this law to park all their vans where they
were living out of. And they were creating like so-called tiny homes out of these vans, which they
called slack mobiles. So they would
put solar panels on them and try to make it like completely autonomous living. They
rejected everything about society. So they thought they could really live autonomously completely.
But he took steps to evict them finally after years of non-payment. And in 2022, November,
several days before they were legally scheduled to vacate,
the property through an eviction, Curtis Lint, who at that time was 79 years old, was lured out to one
of their trailers, and he was bashed on the head. His skull was smashed in. He actually regained
consciousness. And this is according to his testimony and police reports. When he stood up, kind of got a
sense of what just happened. So he just had a serious brain injury at this point. He was surrounded by
several of the Zizians. And then he was repeatedly stabbed with swords. He was impaled through the
chest. They actually stuck a long sword all the way through. And he looked down, he described about
how seeing the blade was protruding through his chest. It had just very narrowly missed his vital
organs. He had a gun for self-protection. And he had a gun for self-protection.
And he shot one of them dead, injured another one, and he ran out of ammo, and the third one backed
off. And so he very narrowly survived that. He rushed to get help. He was taken to hospital. He
ended up losing an eye. Curtis Lint, it was a miracle that he survived that.
They stabbed him in the face?
It was in the course of the attack on the ground that he was cut all over. So his eye was cut up in
there. He was mutilated in that type of attack. So this happened in November 2022. It got no
attention. It was just treated as a case of tenant-related violence in California.
And the reporting treated the arrested suspects as she, her, people, or they, them, and used the aliases that they are known by.
So that was like an escalation of the violence.
But he killed a Zizian at that confrontation.
He did, one of them.
Amir Bohanian was shot dead.
And here's the very sick outcome of that.
So the family of Amir Bohanian started a GoFundMe and framed Bohanian as a victim of trans violence.
Anti-trans violence.
Yeah, they raised tens of thousands of dollars.
And the various trans organizations also eulogized Bohanian as a trans victim in this so-called trans genocide that's happening.
Yes.
And.
U.S. Senate Democrats actually honored Bohanian, amongst other names, officially in the Capitol as well.
So that was sort of the false history that was the narrative at that time amongst trans actors.
And there was no evidence that he was shot because he was transgender.
He was shot because he was stabbing an elderly man with a sword.
He was shot because there were people trying to kill Curtis Lent.
But of course, it's of no surprise to your audience that trans activists are able to frame every grievance as a very, very big slight in offense and attack on them.
Yeah, it's like passive aggression taken to its logical terminus.
And.
I tried to kill you, but I'm the victim.
Yeah.
Yes.
And literally where.
I mean, talk about gaslighting.
They say things like we are living through a trans genocide.
And, you know, it's one thing if it was just radical rhetoric.
They and also Zizians believe this.
They're Zizian members wrote about their belief in ongoing trans genocide.
They would have been encouraging one another to take up firearms, stockpile firearms and prepare for violence.
And in fact.
That as we do this interview is just last week in Huntsville, Alabama, that three suspects, part of a trantifa cell were federally charged in connection with stockpiling and making 3D printed firearms for the purpose of violence and murder against federal agents.
Also in the same week, last week, there was a trans suspect.
Out of Washington State, an American who was federally charged for allegedly helping the trans mass shooter that killed eight women and children in Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia, Canada.
The suspect in that case, the American is named James Melody Bryant.
So a lot of the Zizians.
Zizians.
Not just a meticulous detail of their history of violence and extremism.
It's also an indictment against this media and institution context we're in where we are constantly lied to.
So going back to what happened in Tumbler Ridge earlier this year in February.
When.
A trans shooter killed eight women and children at a property including his home and then at a school, the Canadian authorities described the deceased gunman as a female in a dress with brown hair.
That was how they reported it.
And they didn't release any of the pictures that the American authorities released last week showing that on the guns that were used.
So the people that were slaughtered in Canada were literally killed at the Barrow of Trans Pride.
And these were facts that the Canadian authorities omitted.
And it was only because an American allegedly helped in the planning of that, provided money, that this type of information came through in the criminal complaint.
But that is just emblematic.
But that is just emblematic of.
The lies that all of us are subjected to when it comes to hiding and obscuring the truths about trans violence.
So like going back to Zizians, they allegedly attempted murder on this man.
And then this is 2022.
I'm speaking to you now towards in late 2026.
None of the two suspects in that case have been convicted of anything.
And trial hasn't happened.
No, the trial hasn't happened.
They ran the man through with a sword because they didn't want to pay rent and no one's going on trial.
So the Zizians, one thing they're brilliant at is learning the rules and using the rules against you.
So they used every tactic they could think of to delay the case, delay the case year after year after year.
Curtis Flint was 17-9 when he was attacked.
So he's getting very old.
By 2025, last year, now he's in his 80s at his property.
You know, over years, he left the property, but then eventually he returned.
You know, people who live through traumatic experiences sometimes still kind of revert back to the environments where maybe,
the violence had happened because they think enough time has passed.
It's safe.
You know, the two suspects were still in custody at that time.
He likely had no idea the extent of how this group was much larger than just the two people who were in custody.
So this is how easy it was for Ziz to escape.
He was found by law enforcement responding to the shooting death of Borhanian as well as the attempted murder of Curtis Flint.
He was found by law enforcement responding to the shooting death of Curtis Flint.
They took him to the police station, and while Ziz was waiting to be questioned in the lobby area, he just pretended to be unconscious.
He just closed his eye and collapsed in his chair.
So these law enforcement officers, thinking that there's a medical emergency, send him off to a hospital to be checked out.
They didn't send a police officer with him.
They didn't place him under formal arrest.
So once he was in the hospital. He regained consciousness and just slipped out and then disappeared and then became a fugitive completely.
He was gone for years, and he would reemerge several years later in Pennsylvania.
And by that point, the group recruited more people.
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So the elderly man is almost murdered
impaled on a sword, blinded in one eye,
uh ziz the leader of the group escapes from the hospital after faking uh a medical emergency
and what happened to that yeah so that wasn't the first time he faked a scenario that called
that allowed him to help escape so there was and this is getting a bit into the weeds but i just
i i bring it up just to show like how insane the story was and how badly law enforcement effed up
so before that ziz had faked his death through pretending to have drowned in the waters in the
bay area in official court declarations one written by amir emma borhanian who at that
time was still alive and another one written by his sister naomi
um
they testified or they declared officially that he had fallen off the boat that they were on
and there was a huge air and water search effort involving all these different departments and
agencies all across the bay area like all hands on deck to try to save him
he didn't they didn't find him and and so um there was this belief that he had been dead and
the body hadn't been found yet and then he he was found by law enforcement in um
In Vallejo, California, after this brutal attack.
So there was already another pending felony case against this involving a Zizian protest in Westminster Woods where they allegedly donning robes and masks had created a hostage situation where children at the camp thought that there was an active shooter situation.
So they were facing a whole bunch of charges related to that.
And then Ziz faked his death.
There was a warrant out for his arrest at that time.
This is 2022.
And then when he was found in Vallejo, apparently no police officer ran the record on him to see if they had any active warrants.
So he wasn't arrested at that time.
They just sent him off to the hospital.
And of course, he had a chance to escape.
And then when he would reemerge again, it was in the context of an investigation into a double murder that had happened in Delaware County, Pennsylvania on New Year's Eve at the very end of 2022 involving the victims there were the parents of one of the members, Michelle Zyko.
So the Zizians groups were, even though he had, Ziz had escaped and left California, they were still active.
And the group was growing and people were joining across the U.S.
How and why was this couple killed, the parents of the Zizian member?
On what is believed to be New Year's Eve 2022, and this is according to the police report, a car pulled up at their home at night.
Individual or individuals could be seen.
According to a neighbor's ring camera footage, and there's some yelling that occurs inside the house.
And then two figures are seen leaving the property, going to a car and driving off.
Those individuals could not be definitively identified on that blurry ring camera footage.
Several days later, during a welfare check, because the elderly reached out to them, they said,
Richard and Rita were taking care of Rita's mother, who was very old at that time, and they weren't showing up to check in on her.
So somebody called for a welfare check.
And so state police, Pennsylvania State Police, came to the property, went up and found the two bodies in pools of blood in Michelle Zyko's former childhood bedroom.
They had been shot execution style in the head.
In that case, it was from murders in 2022.
It was only just a few months ago that finally Michelle Zyko was charged with the murder of her parents.
However, at the press conference, the prosecutor said that Michelle Zyko was not alone.
But he stopped short of saying who she was with.
We do know that there's video of two.
Figures being seen leaving that property on the time that it's believed that Richard and Rita were executed.
But Ziz has never been charged with attempted murder.
After the double homicide, Michelle Zyko became a person of interest.
And then she was questioned, not charged, let go, and disappeared.
And she was with another Zizian at that time, Daniel Blank.
Is she trans too?
Yes.
She is a woman who, biological woman, who uses the name Jamie or Alex and at various times has used different pronouns, including they, them.
What happened to the elderly man who got the sword run through him?
I'm jumping through quite a large timeline now, like a decade of all this.
So it may get a little bit confusing as I'm describing because it's involving different geographic regions in many,
different characters at this point.
What people need to know is that, so Curtis Lynn had survived the attempted assassination.
He was blinded in one eye, wore an eye patch, and eventually returned to his property.
He had spent a long time away, but against the urging of his children return,
he wanted to live out the final years on this property that he bought.
And he lived in a trailer and he was used to it.
He liked it.
He missed it.
He came back.
It was a mistake.
In January.
January, 2025, somebody was waiting in the shadows for him outside that property.
And when he pulled in, that person went up with a blade and repeatedly stabbed him.
And according to witnesses, pulled his head back and slit his throat and he bled out.
He died there on the spot.
So at that time he was 82.
Was he ever able to testify against the original assailants?
The trial never happened.
The trial never happened, yet.
To this day, it still hasn't happened.
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Was anyone arrested for his murder?
The person who was arrested?
Days later, Maximilian Snyder
is the person who was in a relationship
with the woman accused of the ambush shooting
of the Vermont Border Patrol officers.
So Zizian was arrested.
Yes.
And then after that,
so in total now,
all of that, that's total of eight victims of this group.
Of this interview,
not a single one has been convicted.
Ziz himself is in federal custody in Philadelphia.
He's only charged with a federal crime
of being a fugitive in possession of firearms.
So this story kind of documents this whole process
of how they were,
what happened during the times they were fugitives.
The bases that they had established
across multiple countries.
And I traveled to where they had lived formally.
So I went,
to the Bay Area and I went to North Carolina where their last established hideout base was
and I got to visit the property and let me tell you I'm not a
spiritual religious person but when I was there I was let in I felt really unsettled like there
was uh felt like there was I would describe as an energy in that type of space because you can see
how they lived their lives and I found for example some of their clothes and this is
part of what makes the Zizians really scary is that they were always dressed in black
very similar to the Antifa black bloc anarchists that I've encountered a lot
I found their clothes I found their hair and they had all these and I found remnants of
their so-called lab or workstations where they would building things and doing things on one
another and in the book part of the big reveal is a very large section in the book of pictures
of that have never been revealed before of the hideout bases pictures of the Zizians in their
past and part of the big investigation here for me was making sure that every single
person and associate is identified by their birth name how hard is that to get their names
it's easier once somebody's been charged with a crime but there's lots of people in the Zizian
circles who have never been formally accused of a crime so they're only known by the aliases that
they use online and screen names and such and this is actually part of a wider issue encounter to my
experience is that a lot of times it's in the absence of booking photos being released and
more and more police departments in agencies are not releasing mug shots so you have the name but
in most liberal jurisdictions they've adopted laws that make it extremely easy to change one's
identity it's literally just one document that you file in the court and you get a legal name
change and that process can really obscure for example in my crime reporting the criminal history
of certain suspects because now they have adopted a new name and simultaneously making it harder even
as it becomes easier to change your name to get their mug shots exactly so back to Portland so it's
it's we're seeing a theme here which is a flight from physical reality we don't want to know what
the physical reality of anything is
so Oregon was one of the states that actually did where law enforcement was allowed to release mug
shots so people might remember that I was releasing the Antifa mug shots back in 2020 from
all the nights of rioting and it's that was it was true there that I was able to find out individuals
who were trans because then you know a photo of the suspect then you can link to like for example
their social media if you only had a name it's kind of it's harder to identify that this is a
person's social media
um Oregon Democrats in reaction to my reporting and actually those who testified
at the state Capitol in Oregon in 2020 brought up my reporting said that through my work that
they were subjected to alleged harassment and things like that after being identified so then
Oregon Democrats passed a law banning all loan for all law enforcement agencies in the state from
releasing booking photos in the absence of a conviction which on paper sounds okay you know
don't release your picture until they've convicted but in Oregon where Democrats have had control for
decades in influence on the courts not very many criminal suspects particularly those involved in
political violence ever end up getting committed speaking as somebody who's been the victim of that
violence well this is the youth wing of their party so they protect it um assiduously I remember those
mug shots that you released very well six years ago and the first thing I thought well the first
thing I felt after like fear and avulsion was sympathy because there was something wrong with
almost every person was on their faces they all looked defective in some way they all looked like
there was something really these were not healthy people at all they all looked like crazy and
unhealthy I think you would have that same type of feeling if you look at the the
mug shots of the Zizians and I have that I was able to there's a certain look um like don't go
outside like filled with weird chemicals these are just not robust looking specimens they're look like
they're they'll look like they're dying actually yeah I I mean this is in the members I dive into
their auto but I dive into their biographical backgrounds and some of them are alleged to have
gone through some abuse there's also
um confusion because all of them have alleged abuse as well it's kind of it's a pattern by a
lot of transactions to activists in particularly the Zizians they would recast normal childhood
experiences as extremely abusive situations involving their families and then use that
to justify why their parents and families were evil and why they would do justice the parasite
with parents was actually another part of the Zizian ideology that made them different from
mainstream Rationality they pulled in all these types of grievance politics um there's a a thinker
in the past who used the term wound collecting and I forget his name but that's what the Zizians did
well sure and the more that you believe you're the victim left empathy you have for others and
that's true for Nations as well as people but if you I mean it's like classic
narcissism like if you think you are the victim you don't feel bad when you hurt other people
can I describe how the Zizians were actually how Ziz himself was finally caught yeah so
in their latter years so I just I talked about the double homicide of the parents in Pennsylvania and
then there was the throat slitting and killing of Curtis Lynn and hit on in the second attack on him
and then there was a shooting
murder of the Border Patrol agent so by that point then it was eight people who were dead Ziz
Michelle zyko and another member Daniel Blank were still on the run somewhere and there was
a multi-state search for them last year in January and February and when they were finally found they
were found in a super rural area in Allegheny County Western Maryland in um in the middle
of essentially a snowstorm so they were hiding out in their box trucks um and in the videos when
they're being arrested the body police body camera video they keep saying uh I haven't done anything
wrong and I believe that that's really that's kind of really summarizes the Zizian's belief
if it turns out that all the state and federal accusations
against them are true and that process is still playing out now nobody's actually had justice yet
but if all the accusations are proven the Zizians really do believe that they have done nothing wrong
because in their world view this effective altruist view about maximizing good it is for them the
rational decision to take out this person kill that person murder that person if it gets in the way I
mean they viewed themselves as really the Vanguard of saving the world anybody who gets in their way
who tries to imprison them who tries to extract money from them take him out take her out they're
due to Vengeance and what was what showed me that this is more than just an isolated case of a fringe
group becoming violent is that with some of the action that's going on right now I'm not going to
talk too much about it because I don't want to talk too much about it but I want to talk a little bit
about what's going on in the world right now I'm going to talk about what's going on in the world right
now I'm going to talk about what's going on in the world right now I'm going to talk about what's going on in the world
right now I'm going to talk about what's going on in the world right now
With some of the actions that the group allegedly took, the murder and such, they received praise from mainstream leftists and trans activists who were sympathetic, for example, of the Border Patrol officer being murdered.
So why was the Border Patrol, I should have asked you, my apologies, why was the Border Patrol officer murdered?
So two Zizine members, Felix Baukolt, who used the name Ophelia, a German national, and Teresa Jungblut, she was the youngest member at that time, 20 years old last year, from Seattle.
They had been observed acting suspiciously in Vermont.
For example, they pulled into a motel and they were dressed all in black.
And wearing tactical gears and had firearms with them.
So in context, in rural, in the northeastern kingdom, which is a really, really rural area of Vermont, it's not unusual for people to carry a handgun.
You're out in the woods, you're out in the country.
But the fact that they were masked and in black and wearing tactical gear, that did make some of the hotel staff question what was going on and made the decision to call law enforcement.
And when federal law enforcement responded, because this is very close to the Canadian border where they were found, they were completely evasive.
They were let go, they weren't accused of any crimes at that point, and they went to another motel.
And when they were driving on the road, very close to the Canadian border, it's unclear where they were going ultimately, but they had packed up all their stuff again and they departed after they had been questioned.
They were pulled over by a U.S. Border Patrol officer, David Christopher Molland.
And according to the investigators,
after the investigation, once he approached their vehicle and asked them to come out, he was fired upon and shot dead on the spot.
He had backup. There was a shootout. Felix Baukel was shot dead.
Teresa Young-Bloot was injured in the arm, but she survived.
And she is the only one who's been federally charged with murder.
The way the story concludes in my writing is bleak.
I mean, you can say a lot about the Zizians, but one thing they're not is stupid.
And they were very strategic with their decision-making.
And it took state prosecutors in Pennsylvania nearly four years to charge Michelle Zyko.
And they, at this point, don't have apparently enough evidence to charge anybody else.
Ziz himself has two.
Two date, never been charged with murder or attempted murder.
Even the felonies that he's facing in Maryland, when they were finally found and arrested after the manhunt,
they essentially amount to firearm possession offenses.
And he doesn't have a criminal conviction history.
He has a whole bunch of outstanding cases, no convictions.
So, we really could see an outcome where he's Ziz, and the other Zizians,
are let out.
In fact, the Maryland state case against Ziz, Michelle Zyko, and Daniel Blank,
was suspended recently for reasons that are unclear.
So, one of the Zizians, Daniel Blank, is completely out free right now.
And there are people online who continue to be radicalized by Ziz and his writings.
So, what's the appeal?
Why?
Why would, if the pitch is, we're going to cut your brain in half and deprive you of sleep in order to do that,
it's hard to see who joins a group like that.
Like, what is the pitch that they're making?
So, for people who are drawn into the rationalist and effective altruist community,
they're not normal people like you and I.
They really view that all of the world is facing,
this existential risk of being completely destroyed by AI.
We must do something.
So, under that sort of environment,
with several other variables,
such as many of the people who have been attracted to the Zizians are autistic.
Several of them are documented diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome.
Their thinking is not like normal people.
It's much more systematic, ordered, and about using,
various mathematical models to map out the decision-making
and what they believe are the best outcomes.
So, when you have that with then sort of a grooming process by Ziz and Zizians
and his writings of pulling in certain people,
you do eventually get some people who are drawn in and believe they can be heroes.
And if it takes,
killing one person to save the animals on earth,
the billions of life form,
the billions of shrimp that are out there,
they're just using a calculation model.
One life versus the life of billions.
And life of billions includes all these animals.
- All the prawns.
- Yeah, exactly.
So, that's the type of people that have been drawn in.
You have to think of them within that context,
- People who've been so damaged by modern technology,
that their brains don't work
and they lack empathy toward people.
- Yes.
And another thing about the Zizians,
like stepping back and looking at sort of the broader picture,
I also write about,
there's a chapter in here called "The Rise of the Trans Killers."
So, the Zizians is one example of alleged trans killers
carrying out a campaign of violence across the United States.
But in the past decade, there have been so many others.
And in fact, one difficulty was finding
contemporaneous reporting at that time
that even described some of them as trans.
And because it didn't, it would refer to them
as by the preferred pronouns, preferred names.
So, you get this completely false impression
that these incidents are not involving trans people
when in fact they are.
And as part of my research for this book, I found that, as part of my research for this book,
I went to Nashville, Tennessee,
and I went to the church
where there was the mass shooting attack by Audrey Hale,
a trans shooter who used the name Hayden,
a trans shooter who used the name Hayden.
And the FBI released scans of the journals,
so-called manifesto left behind by this writer.
And you can see how she was completely radicalized by this inability
to accept the reality of who she was.
- That's right.
- And she took it out on children at the school.
And so like standing outside of there,
and it was important for me to go because I really,
I wanted to go to some of these places
where the trans violence actually happened.
Going to Vallejo, seeing the area on the ground
where Curtis Slint died, bled out.
It's. The "Zizians" is about this whole,
not just about the trans death cult and all their secrets,
their human experimentation, their victims,
but also what we're witnessing and experiencing
across the world of rising trans violence
that's being completely denied,
denied by institutions like in Canada,
denied by law enforcement through them erroneously,
giving us the preferred names, preferred pronouns,
even preferred sex of suspects and criminals
and convicts through the courts.
I mean, the "Zizians" were able to drag out their case for years
until Curtis Slint was assassinated by making accusations
in court filings and civil claims alleging
that their civil rights as trans people were being violated.
So. - And they were backed up.
- They were backed up in this by organized trans groups.
- They were backed up by trans groups, leftist attorneys.
They were even soliciting for donations from people
to pay for their legal fund.
So there's this whole. - Did they get them?
- I don't know how much money that they were able to get,
but they did get legal representation,
private retained legal representation,
and that doesn't come cheap.
- Amazing.
How were they seen in Silicon Valley?
- The Zizians seem to be sort of like a dirty secret
that a lot of the rationalists and effective altruists
in Silicon Valley don't want to talk about
because it came from them, from their community.
Of course, I need a caveat that the EA,
effective altruist community, rationalist community,
is diverse in the sense that as belief systems,
it can be apolitical in the sense that it's not partisan.
You can have those who are libertarian
or maybe even conservative,
and then those who are on the radical left as well.
And the Zizians' beliefs are not widely endorsed
by the communities there, but at the same time,
I wonder if there's any sort of introspection
about what that type of environment produces.
- I mean, you would think it would be in the interest
of trans groups to distance themselves
from trans murderers, but they haven't.
- Not only have they not, in fact,
some of them even celebrate and support the actions
of convicted trans killers.
For example, earlier this year,
a man who uses the name Mia, sorry, named Bailey,
Mia Bailey was convicted and sentenced
in Utah for the killing
of his parents. And in the police interrogation video that was publicly released as part of that
investigation, he talked about how he didn't believe that his mother was supportive enough
of his transition, that she had allegedly contacted the hospital before he was supposed
to have some type of trans surgery, informing them that her son was dealing with a lot of issues.
Typically, people show up for a self-castration or, quote, dealing with a lot of issues. I think
that's fair. He shot his parents dead and attempted to kill his brother as well, shot through the door,
but the rounds didn't hit his brother. So he was sentenced this year to decades in prison
for that double murder. And. As part of my research, I track what leftist activists say online and what I saw from a lot
of trans activists, the trans antifa, aline-type people. I call them trantifa. That's the term I
use. They thought that what Mia Bailey did was justified and right. They believe that those who
are not supportive of one's transgender identity should be eliminated. That's a lot of their view.
And with the. And with the ongoing criminal case against Tyler Robinson, and according to investigators,
he was motivated to assassinate Charlie Cook out of love and support for his trans furry partner.
There are trans activists online who have been highly sympathetic to that. And so,
week after week, there's cases of trans-identified individuals who have been
arrested and charged. And it's getting really no media attention for a number of reasons.
One, a lot of people aren't even aware that the suspect is trans. And two, in legacy media,
there's. People are essentially trained to cover up. I mean, if you read the AP Style Guide, and
that's the guidance for print journalists, I was trained in AP Style. Their recent style guides have all been updated.
I was trained in AP Style. Their recent style guides have all been updated to where you don't use terms like biological female or biological male. You don't mention that somebody is transgender unless it's somehow really relevant to the story. You use their preferred name and their preferred pronouns.
You pretend it's all real. You go along with a lie.
And mislead people.
And so, this is the. A very common. Comprehensive telling of what that group did and the truth of who they are.
If you read the legacy media reporting on the Zizians, and there hasn't been very many, but it's referring to Ziz, a she, her, and this woman who wanted to just save the world from AI risk.
And somehow, in the end, they're now being accused of all this violence.
Some of the reporting has been oddly, actually not oddly, it's predictable, sympathetic to some of the Zizians.
If you're concerned about AI risk, it's because you don't want people to be hurt by AI.
So, I mean, consider the irony of murdering people who are not even connected to the development of AI.
Because you're worried about AI? It doesn't make any sense at all.
And by the way, these are all people who directly or indirectly have contributed to the rise of AI because they work in Silicon Valley.
So, like, they're the perpetrators.
There's sort of an adjacent analogy or anecdote that I can draw that I think. Maybe viewers might understand a bit more.
So, think about, consider like last year, the death threats that Elon Musk got after there were various cuts to USAID.
And that was actually quite, there was a significant number of leftists who were actively calling for his murder.
And in their view, he should be murdered because. His agenda with cuts in the federal government is causing people to die.
So, therefore, he should be stopped.
He should be killed.
So, it's just very simply this sort of, this, in their calculation, and this is not a fringe belief amongst radical leftists,
is somebody who is harming our agenda should be taken out.
Are they all atheists?
Any of these people believe in a god of some kind?
The Zizians and the rationalists and effective altruists are atheists.
However, what I discovered in the course of my reporting investigations is that the Zizians took on various occult-like elements,
such as cursing people with spells and hexes.
That was a surprise to me, but the more I thought about it. Well, it's also obviously witchcraft to me.
Well, initially, I was surprised when I found out. Evidence of this had been documented, but then I thought about all the Antifa militants that I've reported on
who profess to be radical anarchists and atheists will embrace witchcraft and pagan beliefs as well.
Of course.
So, there's this connection between. Well, they're being motivated.
They're being motivated by demons, so that's all real, in my opinion, so I'm not surprised at all.
I am surprised that two years into this administration, we still haven't seen a systematic attempt to understand what Antifa is and who pays for it.
Where's that?
I actually think the administration has done a good job.
I'll name out sort of the things that have been taken by the federal government.
A lot of people forget or don't remember what's happened.
So, in. In the autumn of last year, Donald Trump announced that his administration would be treating Antifa as domestic terrorists.
There was a big executive order.
An executive order is just a statement.
He had said something very similar in 2020 when the riots were happening, and no action was taken at that time.
But from there, then the State Department prescribed, banned four European Antifa groups.
So, making them designated foreign terrorist organizations.
Meaning that if you provide support for them, you can be criminally prosecuted in the United States.
That was the first time an international Antifa group had ever been prescribed by the U.S. government.
And then, there was the White House Antifa Roundtable, which I was very fortunate to be part of that,
where I spoke to the president and members of his cabinet about the threat of Antifa and left-wing violent extremism in the United States.
And more recently, there was an international summit held by the State Department in D.C. on the threat and rise of left-wing terrorism.
And that had officials from dozens of countries around the world participate.
And the State Department then also prescribed some more Antifa-aligned groups,
in particular, an Italian one that provided the online infrastructure for dozens of Antifa websites,
where they post tactics and strategies for attacks, targets of attack, claims of responsibility for terror attacks.
So, the federal government has done a lot. I think, of course, they can always do more.
Has anyone been charged for sending money to Antifa?
For sending money? I'll tell you what they've been prosecuted for.
Because if I gave money to Hamas or Hezbollah, I'd get. I'd get an FBI raid at my house.
What makes it difficult in the law is the fact that Antifa is a movement, an ideology, and it's made up of organizations, groups, and cells.
It's like all of the above.
It's kind of like, think of it how you couldn't prosecute somebody, for example, for donating to a neo-Nazi cause.
Like, that's not a crime.
But for example, if they donated to a group that was involved in criminal activity, you could be prosecuted.
Well, but if you designated it, I mean, I think the designation is the point.
So, like, all these foreign groups have been designated terror organizations, and therefore, anybody whose money winds up in their hands gets indicted.
There have been a million indictments.
Seems like you could do that for Antifa.
What's hard about Antifa, in terms of the criminal prosecution side of it, is that most of the groups in the American context are American, and they operate entirely domestically.
They might read materials from the European groups and read and learn tactics in terms of, like, the radical material in text, but in terms of, like, coordination on an international level, like, money, weapons trafficking, things like that, we don't really see that happen.
That happens domestically at the U.S. level.
So, there have been particular groups who have been completely dismantled.
There was a really big case, actually.
Earlier this year in Texas, a federal prosecution, it was the first time that accused Antifa members of a North Texas Antifa cell have been charged with providing material support to terrorism, attempted murder, and many, many other felonies.
And it was stemming from a shooting on an ICE facility in Alvarado.
Texas on the 4th of July in 2024. So there were 16 people who were prosecuted. So it was not only
the cell, but also those who were accused of providing aid, like helping the ringleader to
escape from the scene of the attack. They were all federally charged and seven of them pleaded
guilty ahead of trial. Some of them flipped and provide testimony and nine went to trial and all
of them were convicted. Collectively, they're facing around 500 years in prison for all of them.
The ringleader of the group was sentenced to 100 years in prison and they're charged with
providing material, they were convicted of providing material support to terrorism among
other crimes. This case really received not much media attention at all, but it was the first
Antifa federal prosecution and convictions in U.S. history. After that, there have been 15-
In U.S. history?
Yes. It was the first time that those,
that individuals of the U.S. government accused of being part of an Antifa group
have been-
After everything, all those people killed in 2020, this was the first time?
When the federal government is determined and also has popular support, you can see
what the full force of the government really looks like. I do understand the feeling that
we're not seeing those type of resources and tools being used to the same extent by
far-left anti-government groups.
I understand that frustration. At the same time, with my speaking to individuals and travel to DC
to talk about this stuff, I, the barriers that they face legally in terms of like prosecuting
Antifa militants is really different compared to some of these other cases where we've seen,
for example, under the Biden administration with that DOJ was,
they're not able to do. I think, you know, in the case of Texas wasn't the only one.
There are still ongoing federal prosecutions now against those accused of being part of
the Antifa cells in Minnesota that were involved in organizing the anti-government violence
and attacks on federal agents and officials back earlier this year against ICE. So there
have been 15 who have been federally prosecuted and are accused in charging documents of being
part of an Antifa network. So there are things being done. Of course, we want to see more.
We've seen, at least from the president, talk about the truth of what he sees and what,
if any of us as ICE sees, the rise of trans violence. But with all the laws that are out
there and the legal protections, like, you know, the violent,
left really know how to exploit the laws to protect themselves. And I think it's a Sisyphean
task for the federal government to really dismantle Antifa. Because at the end of the day,
even if they criminally prosecute the cells that exist from coast to coast, and there are a lot of
them that are involved in criminal activity, by the way, it's very easy for new cells and autonomous
groups to form because the ideology is spreading and is growing and it has legitimacy from a lot
of Democrats. I was very reluctant to come to that view. For a long time, I thought that maybe
Democrats were just slightly misguided with their rhetorical and legal support for Antifa
criminal suspects. But actually,
in many, we've had now, I've had now 10 years of reporting on left-wing political violence in
instances where suspects are carrying out violent attacks and still garner the support of Democrats
in power, like in Portland, for example, and many, many other jurisdictions. My only conclusion is
they are completely fine with using these militants as their foot soldiers.
So the Antifa ideology has,
a lot of support. There's a lot of money as well. There's questions about money. It comes really
through people who donate to what they call mutual aid causes, which is essentially terms for
projects that provide support in one way or the other. It can be in the form of housing or food,
or most importantly, legal defense. They have access to a lot of money from rich donors giving
and large groups of people. So it's a lot of money.
It's a lot of money, but it's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money.
Small amounts. I mean, the amount of money that was raised, for example, the Texas Antifa
defendants, they raised significant funds. They've had huge support in left-wing media,
particularly after the convictions. It was all this reporting was treating them as
people who were sentenced to decades in prison based on ideology when none of them were willing
to report out the facts of what we learned at the trial because of all the members who had flipped
in the court. It's a lot of money. It's a lot of money.
Provided evidence for the prosecution, the type of organization that happened,
the planning, the training, the gathering of dozens of firearms where they met at the safe
house before the shooting attack. And that's just one particular anecdote, but it's emblematic of
how left-wing violence and trans violence, at least four members, by the way, of that Texas
Antifa cell are drones. They are completely protected by many people.
People with money and in positions of power who have the ability to influence.
That's obvious. Let me ask you one last question. Did you run across in your reporting any evidence
that the use of cross-sex hormones inspires violence?
There's a whole chapter in my book looking at all the academic literature-
The physiological effect of this stuff.
Seeking to answer this particular question.
I'm going to say that people who want to know what the academic literature says,
should read my book. But to summarize, there hasn't been enough research that's been done.
Seems like it would scramble your eggs to have cross-sex hormones injected into your body, no?
I will say that some of the limited research that has been done has shown that in polling of people
who have been prone to radicalization, one of the predictors of that particularly violent radicalization
has been a drone.
And this is a study done in Canada, by the way.
Very few people know about some of this academic peer-reviewed research.
But it's very limited because one, academics who seek to ask these type of research questions
are not supported in their academic departments. It's all captured.
You're very familiar with the status of academe.
Two, the funding for this type of research is not there.
And three, those who dare to, in academia, to transgress the role of transgenders,
they're going to have to pay for it.
I think that's really important.
I think that those who dare to press against transgender ideology get absolutely destroyed.
Academic after academic after academic has been hounded out for asking some of these questions
about this phenomenon of transgenderism.
Just the fact that we're seeing a huge explosion in people in the last five to ten years suddenly
identifying as trans when the numbers before were tiny.
Like, what are the questions behind all of this?
I mean, it's been a long time since we heard about this.
It's been a long time since we heard about it.
It's been a long time since we heard about this.
It's been a long time since we heard about this.
Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The Zizians is a radical cult originating in Silicon Valley that blends rationalism, effective altruism, and trans ideology to justify violent actions.
Led by Jack Amadeus Lasota (known as "Ziz"), the group believed trans women had superior cognitive abilities and that brain hemispheres could be separated through sleep deprivation—calling it "debucketing."
Members lived in isolated, self-sustaining communes, including on boats and in box trucks, rejecting mainstream society and using tactics like fossil fuel and financial evasion to avoid prosecution.
The group committed at least eight violent deaths, including attempted murders, assaults, and suicides, with victims often linked to trans violence narratives falsely promoted by activists.
Ziz and other members escaped arrest multiple times by faking deaths, medical emergencies, or using legal name changes, exploiting systemic gaps in law enforcement transparency.
The media and institutions often misreported or suppressed details, using aliases and preferred pronouns to obscure identities, especially in cases involving trans violence or criminal acts.
Despite widespread allegations, no one has been convicted in major cases, and Ziz remains in federal custody for being a fugitive with firearms, while the group’s ideology continues to influence extremist networks.
The case highlights systemic failures in media, law enforcement, and judicial systems to hold radical ideologies accountable, especially when they align with trans activism narratives.
Summary:
The Zizians is a radical cult that emerged from Silicon Valley’s rationalist and effective altruism communities, evolving into a violent extremist group through the fusion of trans ideology, anti-capitalist anarchism, and a belief in "brain hemispheres" as sources of good or evil. Led by Jack Amadeus Lasota, known as "Ziz," the group promoted pseudoscientific theories about trans cognition and conducted dangerous experiments involving sleep deprivation, claiming to "debucket" members' brains. They established isolated communes, lived on boats and in box trucks, and engaged in repeated acts of violence, including the attempted murder and brutal stabbing of an elderly man, Curtis Lint, and the execution-style killings of a couple in Pennsylvania.
Despite these crimes, no members have been convicted, and the group has used systemic loopholes—such as fake deaths, name changes, and refusal of mug shot releases—to evade justice. The narrative surrounding the crimes has been distorted by trans activists and media, who falsely framed victims as victims of "trans genocide" and celebrated the group’s actions as part of a moral crusade. This report exposes a deeper pattern of institutional failure: media suppression of facts, legal barriers to identifying suspects, and the use of ideological framing to delegitimize real violence.
Ultimately, the Zizians represent a dangerous convergence of radical ideology, unchecked experimentation, and media manipulation, illustrating how extremist movements can exploit both intellectual trends and systemic weaknesses to carry out violence while evading accountability.
FAQs
The Zizians were a radical cult rooted in Silicon Valley that combined rationalism, effective altruism, and trans ideology. They believed in a dual-brain theory where one hemisphere is male and the other female, and that trans people, particularly trans women, had superior cognitive abilities. The group believed they could save the world by separating brain hemispheres through experiments like sleep deprivation, and they viewed violence as a necessary step to achieve their goals.
Jack Amadeus Lasota, known as Ziz, was the leader of the group. He was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, and studied computer science and engineering. He became involved in rationalist and effective altruist communities, eventually transitioning to identify as a woman and recruiting others to his cause based on his belief in trans cognitive superiority.
The group allegedly used methods like sleep deprivation and psychological manipulation to induce psychosis, which they believed made individuals vulnerable to control. They also engaged in violent attacks, including stabbing, shooting, and impaling, such as the case of Curtis Lint, who was attacked with a sword and blinded in one eye.
No member of the Zizians has been convicted in any case. Despite arrests and investigations, including a federal case against Ziz for being a fugitive with firearms, no one has faced trial for the murders or violent acts. The trial for many crimes, including the 2022 attack on Curtis Lint, has not occurred.
Media and institutions often used aliases, preferred pronouns, and gendered language when reporting on the victims, which obscured the truth. For example, the Border Patrol officer was referred to using female pronouns, and the victims of violence were falsely framed as victims of trans-related attacks, despite evidence showing otherwise.
Trans ideology was central to the group’s belief system. Ziz believed trans people had superior cognitive abilities and that gender transition was essential for achieving a 'better world.' The group promoted the idea that trans people were born with a 'correct' gender identity, and they used this belief to justify their radical actions and recruitment strategies.
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