Previous: Still Emotionally Processing
Anna spends the month after the CFAR reunion crafting a tizzy of damning BARCSD & FB posts abt Ziz.
She wonders aloud if Ziz “has taken more than one action that had a reasonable probability of causing fear of physical violence”.
She encourages ppl to write in w/ their own stories of Ziz taking “actions that were reasonably likely to induce fear of physical harm in others.”
She marvels that “though [she’s] not aware of Ziz having ever actually physically attacked someone”, she was, presciently, “afraid of that back ~15 months ago”.
She preemptively scolds Mz. Ziz: “I think that doing this is bad, and can cause bad dynamics, even apart from whether there is any actual physical risk to those people.”
She ends one post on a hopeful note: “My favorite world would be one where Ziz also agrees that it is bad to induce physical fear, and where Ziz takes some care in the future to avoid doing so.”
She ends another post w/ a word of warning: that “Ziz has been at least somewhat effective in [trying] to compromise the "immune system" with which this community would normally coordinate to condemn bad behavior.”
(For one ex. of this community’s usually robust “immune response” to bad behavior, pls see pt. 14).
She recalls being “somehow somewhat unnerved by my interactions with Ziz. I am not sure why.” She mentions that “Ziz also seemed to suddenly blame me for (what from my perspective was) a wide variety of things”— but does not mention that chief among these things was transmisogyny (& looking back, the range of “things” beyond that does not seem to us so wide).
Here is where Anna describes Ziz’s email (see pt. 13) as “angry/ranting”, & her response as being one of “extreme fear”— fear so extreme that it left her in a state of freeze for months (for our thoughts on this “fear”, pls see pt. 14).
Peppered amidst all of this are allegations such as: Ziz & her protesting friends were “Speaking only in incoherent languages”; &— perhaps most damning in the minds of our Rationalists— Ziz has sent Eliezer a “threatening” email.
...In response to this, Somni will write on her tumblr: “anna salamon and davis tower kingsley and [another prominent Rationalist] are all certainly trying to purchase the class signifiers of being considered "sane" and "functional" […] i have no regard for what an evil society considers either sane or functional.”
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Re: this second-to-last allegation— that Ziz & friends were speaking “incoherent languages*”— CFAR, in their official response to the protest, calls their reasons for demonstrating “false or hard to follow” (we may point them to pt. 20, in which we, w/ greeeat mental effort, have outlined those reasons— as they are described on the girls’ own protest flyer.) Scratching its head, CFAR seems to close the case by saying that Ziz & friends were just “trying to create a big dramatic event to attract attention”.
*Somni will remember this "mystery language" as: “i was screaming [at the cops] ‘just following orders is no excuse!’ ‘you will be responsible for my sexual assault!’ ‘quit your jobs!’ ‘you dont have to do this!’ and the cops glossed that as ‘incomprehensible’. just as [a prominent Rationalist] said my talking about anna salamon's transmisogyny was ‘incomprehensible’. (i quickly gained knowledge about how ‘incomprehensibility’ worked.)”
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The community defenders in BARCSD respond to all of this by worrying whether Ziz has access to weapons; calling Ziz a “misogynist” for protesting; &— in the case of one prominent Rationalist poster— calling Ziz, Gwen, Somni, & Emma “aggressive psychotic people”.
Another prominent Rationalist— Patrick LaVictoire— a former MIRI employee who has donated tens of thousands of dollars to that organization— chimes in to further the “cult” allegations against Ziz. He claims that Ziz has a “staggering level” of “subservience from [a] tiny subgroup”.
...To again borrow Somni’s excellent phrasing: “ziz has somni, gwen, emma mindhacked as an infohazardous* guru.”
*An "infohazard" is, in Rationalist lingo, "a piece of information which is dangerous simply by being known or shared."
(This— it hardly bears repeating— is once more ironic, seeing as the man writing this is himself in a “subgroup” which shows a distinct degree of “subservience” to our old friend Eliezer).
Also from Somni: “in my experience, predatory people when then run into each other dont like, start cooperating with each other for a common cause and then become more powerful… like if you saw people who actually all had the predatory gang-leader guru neurotype get together and start working for a common cause it would be amusing because that sort of stuff doesnt happen irl.”
…And also from Somni: “the things anna is saying about ziz, that shes roping in poor innocent people, infecting them with infohazards, and endangering them with her plans. is the same stuff [another prominent Rationalist] said about me when i started talking about cissexism.”
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Yet, out of all of these allegations, it is the “cult” variety which hits Gwen esp. hard.
This, to Gwen, strips her & her friends of their autonomy— & it implies that they’d never say what they have been saying against CFAR/MIRI, were Ziz not controlling them.
We once more turn to Somni for a retort to these painful allegations: “all of these people could model anarchistic cooperation if they wanted to, none of them really have the neurotype to want to. so will restrain themselves from computing the [logic] of what they see, and overlay it with a structure of submission and domination for political gains of trying to arrange coordination against Ziz.”
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Patrick’s post also compares Ziz to known rapist Brent Dill, whom we reluctantly met in pt. 14. Not only is this esp. hurtful— given that, thruout this storm of vitriol, Ziz has continued to gather & disseminate allegations against Brent—...
...it is also, with grotesque irony, esp. inaccurate, bc Brent was supported by CFAR thruout his *own* storm of quite credible allegations. He was “praised” by Anna— who, it bears repeating, ignored the allegations of rape against him, & continued to funnel vulnerable Rationalists into his arms for “emotional counseling”. A clear case of apples & oranges!
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Next: Will Gwen Get a Break?