Who Are the Zizians? Radical Trans ‘Cult’ With Ties to Border Agent Killing
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The recent killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Vermont is reportedly linked to a purported “death cult” made up of radical, highly-educated, vegan and transgender members known as the “Zizians.”
The group is said to revolve around Ziz, who is a transgender woman. Ziz, whose legal name is Jack LaSota, garnered a following online after posting about her ethical and social theories on her blog, Sinceriously.
This was how Felix “Ophelia” Baukholt, the German national involved in the shooting last week, discovered LaSota, Baukholt’s friend Jessica Taylor told Newsweek.
“She was interested in things like effective altruism (& criticisms of it), ethics, ethical veganism, mathematics, decision theory…a lot of the same topics as Ziz, and she had similar views on a number of things,” Taylor said of Baukholt.
Taylor posted on X, formerly Twitter, after hearing of the shooting, saying that she knew Baukholt and calling out the “Zizians.”
Baukholt, who was also a transgender woman, was fatally shot on January 20 after she and another individual, identified as Teresa Youngblut, engaged in a shootout with Border Patrol agents. Agent David Maland was killed in the gunfight after he and other agents pulled the pair over in a traffic stop.
After Baukholt was identified by authorities and Taylor realized it was her friend who had been killed, she thought LaSota might have been involved, given her friend’s fondness for the blogger and the “pattern of violence” that she said matched up to what she knew of the group. She posted on X, formerly Twitter, after hearing of the shooting, saying that she knew Baukholt.
“I remember warning Ophelia that Zizians were a death cult with a high local death rate…” Taylor wrote.
Taylor, who said she had not spoken to Baukholt since 2023, told Newsweek the group tended to choose victims of “petty authority”—like landlord or parent or, in this case, a Border Patrol agent—and that she and Baukholt had even previously discussed “the high death rate” around the Zizians.
“Because I had been familiar with the Ziz story for a while, I saw some possible connections before others did, and was trying to prove it by looking at people’s social media profiles and so on,” Taylor said.
Content retrieved from: https://www.newsweek.com/who-are-zizians-radical-trans-cult-ties-border-agent-killing-2024308.
