How The Media Picks The Pronouns Of Zizians Trans Vegan Death Cult Members

And ignores the role of transgender ideology in the cult

When the BBC finally reported on the Zizians death cult last Friday, the headline mentioned the group was “vegan,” but said nothing about its foundational belief in transgenderism.

Reporter Mike Wendling explained that Jack Amadeus ‘Ziz’ LaSota is a “transgender woman” and then used female pronouns for him throughout the piece. However, Wendling entirely avoided pronouns for any other member of the group.

Wendling also questioned the appellation of the word “cult” to the followers of LaSota, a group reportedly consisting of dozens of people nationwide, all of whom who call themselves ‘Zizians’ to advertise that they are in a cult.

Poulomi Saha, an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies cults, says that while there is no strict legal definition of such a group, several of the Zizians' attributes align with the popular cultural conception of the term.

"This is a group of individuals that seem to share some unorthodox viewpoints," she said. "That in and of itself wouldn't open up them up to the cult label… but then there is this leadership figure 'Ziz.'"

Saha noted, however, that there is still significant uncertainty about the relationships between group members and about what may have motivated alleged acts of violence in recent years.

Two kinds of organization fit the description of the Zizians as a murderous group of people using a collective name coined from the name of their leader: a terrorist cult, or a criminal gang. The difference is that violent cults display fanaticism.

Indeed, there is crossover between the two underworlds. For example, the median western recruit to the Islamic State has had a history of gang violence. Do the Zizians display fanaticism? is the real question, here, and the choice of a murderous vagrant box truck lifestyle argues yes.

On its own, a vegan diet is not extreme. Combined with sleep deprivation, as LaSota has done, the caloric and nutrient restrictions of a vegan diet reduce individual resistance to a cult leader. Dietary restriction and sleep deprivation are forms of torture aimed at breaking down the personality of the victim. Cults use them all the time.

News organizations that do address the ideology of the Zizians mention they are vegan. However, the BBC story linked above was updated with a new headline, presumably because ‘normal’ vegans did not want to be linked to a death cult.

When they do examine the role of transgender ideology, news outlets focus on LaSota’s bizarre theory of left-right brain hemispheres containing different genders at war with one another.

As we shall see, reporters never ask whether there is anything extreme about transgenderism itself that may have misled young people to adopt other extreme views. All but a handful report on LaSota with female pronouns.

The reason, as we have observed in our tracking coverage of this story, is that LaSota had a blog. For those of us who deplored the advent of ‘legal sex’ and ‘passport sex,’ it is time to add ‘blog sex’ to the list of abominations.

Of the group membership publicly known right now, only “Gwen” Danielson had a blog like LaSota. Indeed, the box truck “stealth RVs” were his idea and he first aired the idea in his blog.

Because he “identifies as transgender,” his father Brett — no doubt anxious to maintain fragile ties with his son — refers to Gwen as his “daughter.”

Altogether, the San Francisco Chronicle has done the most detailed reporting on the Zizians. Last week, they interviewed Brett and parents of another cult member. Family members all describe nonviolent children who could not possibly be guilty of murder.

According to Brett Danielson, “his 30-year-old daughter is living off the grid, working construction jobs under a fake name, apparently afraid that someone else in the highly intelligent circle could be trying to track her down.” If true, then Gwen has learned to work for a living, the very challenge that LaSota rejected by adopting that itinerant box truck lifestyle. Good on him.

A transgender Washington state native, Gwen Danielson had left behind a full academic scholarship to Rice University to join the rationalist scene. She soon met LaSota, who is also trans, and joined her on a fateful tugboat journey from Alaska to Half Moon Bay that would ultimately put the group into contact with one of its alleged victims.

No one else in the transgender vegan death cult gets wrong-sex pronouns. At times, the gender-neutral “they/them” are applied, but only LaSota and Danielson, the two bloggers who wrote at length about their transgender nature and its effects on their genius, get to have wrong-sex pronouns.

Michelle Zajko’s parents, Richard and Rita Zajko, could not be reached for comment because they are dead. Both were shot to death in December 2022 and Michelle has been a person of interest in the crime ever since. She appears to have cropped her hair and may have medicalized a gender identity, but details are not forthcoming.

Daniel Blank “really found himself” in the so-called rationalist community, his parents tell the Chronicle. “‘He’s under the influence of a cult,’ said Alexander Blank, whose son, Daniel Blank, cut off contact with his parents more than two years ago. ‘And I believe (he) is kind of a victim of the cult.’”

“He’s my only son, my only child,” his mother, Nadia Blank, said in an interview. “It’s been a nightmare, not even knowing if he’s alive.”

Helpfully, a color anecdote confines the examination of Blank’s extreme views to veganism.

Alexander Blank noticed a change in his son when he visited that Thanksgiving, recalling a rare disagreement during a shopping trip, when the father purchased non-vegan food.

“He was really looking down at me,” Alexander Blank said. “Not that he actually violently argued, but he said, ‘You shouldn’t do that, animals have the same rights as humans.’”

Does Blank ‘identify’ as transgender like the rest of the group? It is impossible to tell from the current coverage, and law enforcement are not sharing whatever they know. We can only guess from the pronouns that his parents are not affirming an identity — and neither is the Chronicle.

Chronicle reporters understandably want to focus on the “painful and mystifying estrangement from their once-promising children.” They do however conclude that the Zizians are “united by an array of core beliefs: that established rationalist groups have gone astray; that humans must stop eating animals; that trans women are blessed with intellectual gifts; that the ends justify the means” (emphasis added).

Despite transgenderism being a core belief of the group, the press is not going out of its way to award wrong-sex pronouns.

Emma Borhanian, who identified as transgender and used a female name, is awarded posthumous she/her pronouns. He was killed in the attempted ambush murder of the group’s landlord in November 2022. When Borhanian attacked lot owner Curtis Lind with two other group members, all wielding samurai swords, Lind drew a pistol and killed Borhanian.

Lind also wounded Alexander “Somni Logencia” Leatham, who awaits trial for his role in Borhanian’s death. News reports use male pronouns for Leatham, who apparently does identify himself as a transgender person. What gives?

Suri Dao, the third group member arrested for the attempted murder of Lind in 2022, turns out to be Tessa Berns,”a 24-year-old female award-winning former child genius from Denver” Colorado, according to Andy Ngo, who uses feminine pronouns for Berns.

Berns identifies as trans nonbinary now ("they/them") and used to use both male and female pronouns. She previously used the alias "Elizah." Her lawyer has tried to shield her legal name from the court and prosecutors.

“Prosecutors charged her under the WRONG IDENTITY, and the defense will exploit that,” Ngo added. This object lesson in the madness of transgender identification and legal names has so far gone unexamined and unaddressed by the broader media. No wonder Ngo keeps scooping them.

We must note that Andy Ngo has consistently used correctly-sexed pronouns throughout his coverage of the Zizians story. As a result, the media channels which platform Ngo also default to correctly-sexed pronouns.

Here is Ngo appearing on Rising, a weekday morning show published by The Hill, a national political news website. Niall Stanage, the anchor on the left, is the show’s liberal anchor. He makes no attempt to correct Ngo or filibuster on transgenderism as an animating ideology of the group.

Maximilian Snyder, who in January murdered Curtis Lind, the sole witness to his own attempted murder in 2022, helpfully uses “any pronouns.” The media has defaulted to male ones.

Theresa “Milo” Youngblut, the woman arrested in the killing of Border Patrol Agent David Maland on Inauguration Day, is “she/her.”

Like Borhanian, Felix “Ophelia” Bauckholt is awarded posthumous pronouns. The German national and well-paid Wall Street ‘quant’ was killed in the shootout with Border Patrol officers.

As we have seen here, legacy media organizations are hesitant to focus on the ideological influence of transgenderism. Instead, it is cast as a wacky species of ideology, something out of the ‘transgender mainstream,’ and also complicated by other influences — veganism, rationalism, anarchism, and transhumanism.

The thought-leaders of the cult are affirmed, for there is a sufficient amount of written evidence in which they refer to themselves as transgender. Everyone else in the Zizians death cult is presumed innocent of preferring pronouns unless they are dead.

I am not making these rules, I am recording them. Historians seldom consult news archives unless they want to see how the original story changed over time. “The first draft of history” almost always needs factual corrections and updating as new facts emerge.

To date, the story of the Zizians in the media is a concerted effort to avoid asking whether the gnostic splitting of gendersoul from fleshbeing might have some uncomfortable ideological suggestions for darker minds like Jack LaSota’s.

Only Andy Ngo is speaking sense. He points out, correctly, that prosecutors face a difficult task of proving LaSota guilty of a criminal conspiracy. Comparisons to Charles Manson are apt. LaSota is confident that his cult will always take the fall for him. Only time, and space for self-deprogramming, can get any of them to cooperate with law enforcement.

It is unclear just what LaSota or anyone in his cult has actually done to themselves in terms of medical transition, but the scars they have left on their families are tragic. I feel most for the parents. They are coming to grips with something much bigger and stranger than they are prepared to understand.

In that sense, they are like the parents of ROGD and AGP children. Transgenderism is a cult of self-hatred and body horror that does terrible things to young minds and bodies. Legacy media resists telling that story with all their might.