Zizians. Mordisk transkult sprider skräck i USA (2025-02-18)

The Zizians have been tied to the killing of a US border patrol agent, David Maland, near the Canadian border in January and five other killings in three states.

LaSota, Zajko and Blank were arrested in Frostburg, Maryland, on Sunday afternoon.

The judge in the case ordered LaSota – who uses she/her pronouns – held without bail citing concerns about her being a flight risk and a danger to public safety. Prosecutors said LaSota “appears to be the leader of an extremist group known as Zizians” that has been linked to killings.

Officials have offered few details of the cross-country investigation. But Associated Press interviews and a review of court records and online postings tell the story of how a group of young, highly intelligent computer scientists, most of them in their 20s and 30s, met online, shared anarchist beliefs and became increasingly violent.

Their goals are not clear but online writings included topics such as radical veganism, gender identity and artificial intelligence.

At the middle of it all is “Ziz”, the leader of the strange group whose members are sometimes called “Zizians” in online forums.

LaSota published a dark and sometimes violent blog under the name Ziz and – in one section – described her theory that the two hemispheres of the brain could hold separate values and genders and “often desire to kill each other”.

LaSota, who in her writings says she is a transgender woman, railed against perceived enemies, including so-called rationalist groups, which operate mostly online and seek to understand human cognition through reason and knowledge. Some are concerned with the potential dangers of artificial intelligence.