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So far in News on News, we have slid to the left, we have slid to the right, & we have found very little difference in their coverage of this hot-button issue. Today, we thought: why not throw ourselves into the hands of fate, & use a random number generator to pick from our list of articles, in order to see if— no matter what we read— we could still win bingo!
First out of the gate is 😮 “disgraced provocateur” Andy Ngo writing for the New York Post?? We, who have been disgraced many, many times have yet to receive a single invite to contribute our voice to the Post’s pages— Andy in that sense gives us— & dare we say, the disgraced community writ large— hope.
Andy also, w/ his remarkable headline- “The case of the radical ‘Zizian’ vegan trans cult and the shooting death of a Border Patrol agent”- immediately wins us 4 points at bingo 🔔🔔🔔🔔
We regretfully do not even have the bingo categories to benefit from what comes next— to benefit from his opening line’s quadruple-axel gambit: “a radical leftist trans militant cult”. He continues to streak across the field, winning us points left & right w/ his implication that Ophelia & Milo are nicknames, that “Ziz” is a (criminal?) alias, & ofc w/ his lavishing of deadnames & mis-pronounery to all involved.
He coins our fav description of this cabal to date: “a mysterious cult of transgender ‘geniuses’ who follow a trans leader”, & then coins the worst description of poor Ophelia that we have ever seen: “Bauckholt was a biological male who identified as trans and used feminine pronouns. He…” 💀 Not content w/ that, Andy swiftly IDs Milo as a “biological female”, & waves his arms in alarm at neopronouns, which we shoulda added to the bingo 😪
***
Milo’s tony private high school is touted as “prestigious and woke”, which made us scratch our heads: we have not known prestige to be associated w/ esp. liberatory pursuits— certainly not when this “prestige” will cost one $57,000/year to attend! Andy is, like Jessica, possibly confusing performative allyship w/ a genuine commitment to dismantling oppressive structures— we know the feeling: the cooption of liberatory rhetoric has beguiled us on many occasions 😪
Again like us, Andy is not immune to the pull of a hyperfixation. For Andy, however, this hyperfixation is Antifa, which he spies hiding around every boulder, tree, & shrub— &, more to the point, which he spies w/ great excitement among Milo’s Bluesky follows (MBF)!
We, put on guard by his optimistic assessment of Lakeside, checked out MBF ourselves. We found a “Progressive Democrat” advocating for “Nonviolence 💛”, a velociraptor who promises to bite fascists, & Audere. 🤔 Thinking that Andy had perhaps confused Bluesky w/ X, we hurried over in that direction, where we found a “they/them goblin”, whom we would like to meet, a heartwarming sanctuary farm account, an anarchist wit who made us smile w/ their self-description as “radically uncool”, Emma (RIP😢😢😢), &… oh, that’s the end of the list 😑 Andy, is this Antifa in the room w/ us right now?
Audere is introduced as “an ‘any pronouns’ computer science whiz from a 😪 wealthy Seattle family”, & we once more zoom out to include the whole gang— or, as Andy would have it, the whole “trans extremist group”, which soon enough he shortens to “Ziz cult”. Ziz is, perhaps needlessly, pointed out as the “transgender leader” of these “trans vegan[s]”, & ofc deadnamed ruthlessly alongside Emma & Somni. We are still, btw, waiting & longing for a Somni selfie to emerge in place of that mugshot— we shudder to imagine ourselves splashed across the global public’s headlines in such cruel overhead lighting 😓
***
“Transhumanism” is brought up twice in a row, which makes us wonder if Andy wonders if it’s a trans thing. We ofc had to google it— it is, alas for Andy, not a trans thing; it’s a tech thing which we don’t really have time for. You can learn all abt it here.
We should have added “biological” to our bingo card! Next Andy deepens readers’ understandings of Mz. Ziz’s personhood & character by calling her a “biological male who identifies as a woman”, by saying she “is accused of influencing followers to kill” (is she?), & by badly flubbing his an(dy)alysis of the Ziz blog. He has some kind words— “prolific”— & some harsh words— “rambl[ing]”. These writings are namely said to “ramble about the use of violence and radical anarchist tactics to achieve various ends.”
Time for our least favorite phrase: there is much to unpack here.
***
Andy, like us, is a humanities girlie. His weapon is the pen. Ofc he’ll notice when Mz. Ziz could have structured her musings differently— but we, unlike Andy, do not blame Ziz for this: she is a STEM girlie, making her weapon the… calculator? Speaking of weapons, Ziz does not ramble about violence: it mainly comes up once, wrt the punching of nazis*, & that post, “Punching Evil”, has quite a nice structure!
*There does seem to be a through-line in the issue Andy takes w/ these friends’ political views 🤔
As for whether Ziz rambles abt radical anarchist tactics… oh how we wish she did! Let’s pause here & eat some crow— we have, in the past, been unnecessarily snooty towards the Zizster: really driving the point home that she, to our knowledge, has never read abt radical anarchist tactics. We fear this may have sounded like we were saying, “Ziz isn’t a real anarchist! She hasn’t read the required reading that we just made up in our heads!” That would be silly indeed, & we want to set the record straight: Ziz iz an anarchist; she needs pass no exam for entry into this club. The doors of anarchy are open to all 🤗
Through patronizing her, we’d hoped we could get ahead of rumors like the ones we see here in the Post: rumors that Mz. Ziz is perhaps an... Emma Goldman for the 21st century? Yet our efforts were too late!
For your information, Andy: the anarchism of Ziz & friends seems mainly to have been used, amongst themselves, to avoid hurting each other thru vain & futile hierarchical jockeying. They unfortunately never got a chance to learn any direct action tactics & put those tactics to use against the Rationalists, never mind against our cybernetic society writ large.
Returning our focus to your pen, Andy, we might encourage you to unpack exactly what you mean by “various ends”. What are the ends— other, ofc, than an equitable friend-group? Dismantling the hierarchy of plant-based milks? Abolishing the arbitrary gendering of AI voice assistants? Better think fast, Andy. Tick tock, tick tock.
Op, but Andy is out of time: he instead wraps up his feature on a somber note— & an uncited note: he claims that, following the “killings” (we unfortunately have to ask: which killings?), some “trans activists online” “cheer[ed]”! One is said to have said, wrt to Lind*: “Ladies and gentlemen, we got him.”
*Or as Andy really says, wrt “the Vallejo, Calif.”, which we take to mean Mr. Lind.
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It’s sad that Andy includes no screenshots or links, bc it would be exhilarating for us to find others as invested as we are in the travails of these young ppl! Also bc, in Andy’s words, these others (TO) have been “pressuring people not to talk to authorities or journalists”.
Ofc one should never talk to authorities— right? We hope this doesn’t lead to a situation where only opponents of our cabal (OOOOC) are talking to authorities, but we understand the motivating sentiment— on the other hand, we would beg TO: PLEASE talk to journalists! Even if they misrepresent you, please stand your ground & make your voices heard— or we will be left w/ the desert landscape we are currently facing: the landscape where only OOOOC talk to journalists!
We cannot bear to let the likes of Jessica Taylor & Zack M. Davis fill the silence. Alas, we are helpless bystanders & will not be invited to talk to anybody. If you, tho, are reading this & are not a helpless bystander— if you are a personally-connected bystander— the time for breaking maxims & chasing down reporters may be now.
The press is not your friend, but neither must you be the press’s friend: w/ enough ppl making enough attempts, there must be some way to inject a little counter-narrative into this spiraling snowball of tragic reportage. We— not wishing to draw the roving eyes of Rationalists to ourselves— remain anonymous; but from our anonymity whisper to you: good luck, get out there, & tell all.
***
We have been blocked from bingo by Mr. Ngo’s refusal to hand us any New News 😤
Peculiarly, our random number generator has determined we should remain w/in the Murdoch News Corp. family tree. We leave the Post (TP) for the Sun, which light googling has revealed is— unlike TP— less consistently ideological; it leans conservative, but may flex liberal when it chooses. We sit back in our chair, & breathe a sigh of relief…
…until we read our story’s URL: “zizian-cult-manson-family-kill-[Redacted]-lasota”! 🫣
No, those girls haven’t got ahold of Ziz, have they? 🤭 Ofc, it iz Ziz who is being compared to Mr. Manson: on what grounds? Bc other news outlets have said so!💁🏻♀️ To drive the point home, The Sun includes a side-by-side of Mz. Ziz on the left, looking up at the police cameraman w/ quiet defiance & sorrow, & Charles on the right, w/ an X carved in his forehead, apparently lost in thought.
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This piece comes to us from Forrest McFarland: Senior news reporter & “alumnus of the National Journalism Center's program under Young America's Foundation, which has produced thought leaders like Ann Coulter”* 😮💨
*It is at this point we realize: we are not reading The Sun, but The U.S. Sun— which is, happenstantially, still owned by Murdoch & co., so whatever.
A peek thru Forrest’s bylines reveals that he loves the story of the Manson fam— so do we! We worry, tho, that he may have bitten off more than he can chew w/ this headline, which promises readers that he will expose— 😮 thanks to a “member’s ex”!— both the “sick moral code” of these Zizians, & their “kill orders”! If so, this certainly will be New News 😋
***
We read of “death cult[s]”, we read of “transgender members”— bingo boxes already, sadly, checked thanks to Mr. Ngo. We read the inventive appellate “anti-establishment computer nerds” (AECN), & we read that an “expert in extremist beliefs” has compared this “crew to Charles Manson”— our apologies, we weren’t aware we were in an expert’s presence 🫢
Forrest shocks & nearly drives us to tears by calling Ziz “she”— which he follows immediately w/ the caveat that she was “born male”, & that she “used female pronouns online”. Deadnaming Ophelia should be its own bingo category by now, annnd these AECNs are further fleshed out as “all shar[ing] a passion for veganism and a rejection of the gender binary.”
Ofc, here Forrest has made a little misstep: not all trans ppl reject the gender binary (GB)— far from it! How, if this were the case, would we be graced w/ such luminaries as Blaire White? Forrest is perhaps confusing trans & nonbinary ppl (NP)— Ziz does have nonbinary friends, but we dk if Forrest knows this since he’s only gestured so far to “transgender members” (also, we're sure many NP may decline the GB for themselves, but not reject it overall!)
At any rate, this is disappointing from Forrest as it flattens trans experience & assumes that all trans ppl hold the same political or philosophical stance, when what they really hold is a wide range of opinions.
***
Forrest continues to shock us as he trots on The Expert, who says… that Ziz & co. aren’t really like the Manson family? 🤔
For one, they’re not hippies? And “They're not all necessarily all connected in one overarching plan”? And “It's not necessarily like a Manson family type of plan”?
Who is this guy, we kind of like hi— oh, oh, he’s from the… Anti-Defamation League? Wha— who here’s Jewish? We could be wrong, but we think everyone’s a lapsed Protestant or Catholic— except for Emma, who’s lapsed Baha’i. & hold on a second— this isn’t even the Sun’s expert: this is USA Today’s expert, Forrest’s just quoting from USA Today! We stood on ceremony for nothing?😢
Well, meet Mark Pitcavage: a historian & analyst of far-right groups. Couldn’t they find an analyst of far-left groups? We ask bc next he says something that we first nod about, & then run to our notes about:
When you look at [LaSota's] writings, it's all about the mind and consciousness (TMAC). [LaSota] doesn't really seem interested in left-wing political issues the way most people would understand it.
We wouldn’t say it’s all abt TMAC, but we are once more nearly moved to tears by someone, anyone, describing Ziz’s blog in terms other than “violence”! & he doesn’t even insult it while doing so!🥲
On the other hand, we— who have so recently eaten crow on this point— would say that Ziz “really seem[s] interested in left-wing political issues”. Sure, her way of talking thru these issues is somewhat unique, but overall— even more so than TMAC— her focus is p. consistently on oppressive conditions, & how to overcome them. Is this not a left-wing issue?
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Such q.s remain unanswered by Forrest, who seems to throw up his hands at Mark’s moderation as he calls such beliefs “bizarre”! He circles back around to Ziz’s “expectations for Zizian followers”, about which “disturbing details”, so he says, have “come to light”. Time for some juicy New News?
Nope, time for a misattribution of Gwen’s hemisphere theory to Ziz— or should we say, to she who “went by Ziz” (she is notoriously still alive!)— & Forrest seems not to have heard Mark at all, bc next he refers to “a blog where she often opened up about violent thoughts”! Is this blog in the room w/ us rn, Forrest?
At last we reach the section on “‘KILL ORDERS’”, only to find… 🙃 Jessica Taylor, what are you doing here??? Forrest says she DATED Ophelia??👩❤️💋👩 Will this be the New News that wins us our bingo?
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We fear not: we fear USA Today (of whom Forrest is still borrowing the reportage) is dangling lesbian love in front of us where none exists 😢 C’est la vie. While we would like nothing more than to welcome Jessica to the sisterhood, we base our cynicism on 4 facts:
a) Jessica, on X, has called Ophelia only “a friend”— is she perhaps fearful of coming out to those mean, mean Rationalists?😢
b) We dk if these two would have had much to talk abt: their beliefs were quite different— tho what can’t love overcome?😘
c) They lived on diff. coasts— WHAT CAN’T LOVE OVERCOME??🥰
d) Jessica is indefatigable abt speaking to the press, but has never brought this up before. Why would she come out in a rag like USA Today— why would she come out to national reporter Trevor Hughs,
& to no one else? 🤷🏻♀️
We hate to resign them to being gal pals, but this one goes in the bucket of ¿Dubious News (¿DN)— which, sadly for us, is already occupied by the ¿DN of Andy Ngo.
***
We find ourselves further resigned to gal pal land by what comes out of Jessica’s mouth next: by Jessica’s fears that Ziz’s friends were “descending into a ‘death cult’ or ‘murder gang’ as they were being forced to abide by a strict moral code (SMC).”
This is very silly. We’ve seen no evidence that Ziz’s friends were “forced” to abide by anything— & what would that SMC be anyway, veganism?
Jessica here seems to be leaning on moral panic logic: on the familiar trope that groups w/ “strong convictions”— whether these be anarchists, communists, queer activists, or— huh, yeah, we guess a bunch of them are on the left— pose an existential threat: that these groups will take their beliefs too seriously, & that the inevitable next step is violence. In reality, there are many “strongly convicted” groups— monks, for instance— who never turn into “murder gangs”.
Jessica may not know this— we’re almost sure she doesn’t know this— but the danger to such logic is that it invariably reinforces the status quo (TSQ).
It is not such groups’ hypothetical murderous potential which those who uphold TSQ are really— originally— afraid of: it is the mere fact that such groups are serious abt their values, & that these values— frequently— are challenges to the norm. This logic serves only to discredit such groups before they become a ~threat~ to TSQ— not in a physically violent sense; merely in an ideological sense.
***
Soon enough, we hear— from Jessica? From Forrest? From USA Today? Who knows— abt what exactly this group— allegedly— felt strong convictions abt:
Zizians believed that landlords were inherently corrupt, while animals were innocent creatures that needed to be protected under any circumstances.
Now, we are hypocrites: we are meat-eaters! We love a BLT! But do we simultaneously believe that “animals [are] innocent creatures”? Yes! Lots of ppl do, & there’s nothing radical abt that! Do we believe they “[need] to be protected under any circumstances”? Believe it or not: we do! We don’t have a fancy argument as to why, we just do 😢
Do we believe that “landlords [are] inherently corrupt”? Not inherently corrupt, we don’t believe that anyone is inherently corrupt— but do we believe there are lots of exploitative landlords, combined w/ a dearth of affordable housing reforms in this nation? We do! More to the point, tho: did our “Zizians” believe this?
We have seen no evidence to support this in any of their writing. We have seen nary a mention of landlords.
Even Maoists— even Maoists under Mao— did not embark upon land reform w/ a standpoint of, “landlords are inherently corrupt”— landlordism was a diff. matter; this may appear to split hairs, but strikes us as a critical distinction.
When ppl like Jessica Taylor and/or Forrest and/or USA Today misrepresent “Zizian” beliefs so cartoonishly, we fear they are, on a broader scale, turning commonly-held left-wing positions into monstrous shadows on the wall. This is why we belabor the point.
There is nothing cultish or freaky or even fringey abt such beliefs; to argue otherwise makes us wonder, did we bonk ourselves on the head? Did we dream the past 75 years? Is it 1950, is that Senator McCarthy on the television waving around a list?
😮💨 Be that as it may…
***
Next we put a provisional bingo dot on “The Unnamed Site”, which we fear has influenced Jessica’s closing line: "You're talking about being willing to kill people who they think are bad". This— even in the notorious “Punching Evil”— is nowhere said by Ziz, nor by friends.
On a lighter note, we follow this w/ a delightful pic of the Manson girls:
& an even more delightful caption: “The group strays from the beliefs of the Manson family (MF)” 🤗 Sorry, Forrest!
We’re not out of these woods yet, tho: Forrest waits until NOW to throw around the term “anarchist Zizians”? Forrest, Ms. Coulter would have put that in line one! The girls’ protest is bafflingly rewritten as “some of LaSota's anti-establishment rallies”, &— at last we emerge into the sunlight w/ a line that makes us v. happy: Milo’s & Ophelia’s traffic stop “blew the top off the murderous group's years-long scheme”!
WHAT SCHEME, FORREST? What’s Mark Pitcavage, chopped liver? Your ow— er, somebody else’s expert has decreed: “They're not… connected in one overarching plan”! “It's not… a Manson family type of plan”! 🤭
***
Anyway, burned as we were by J. Oliver Conroy’s dangled “uncanny tidings”, we figured we’d better zip up to review Forrest’s meaty sandwich of a headline once more, juuust to make sure he didn’t short us.
We presume their “sick moral code” was voluntary veganism, &— as for those “kill orders”… we had to look it up: who typically sends out kill orders?
A.: organized crime— & the military! Is there Mafia on Zizian Isle (ZI)? Has ZI’s Secretary of Defense decided he’s tired of being so little-known? Has he tried to win the world’s praise thru a daring drone strike? A terrorist takedown? Who is in his sights?👀 This Forrest, we fear, keeps its secrets 🤫
After all this, we didn’t even win bingo? 😠
We were stopped by a DEARTH of New News! This is what comes from not talking to reporters😥
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