I keep seeing this bits and pieces of this story pop up, does anyone have an ELI5 on what the Ziz cult is?
This is (1) a thorough write-up (2) with quotes/info multiple sources (3) whose author is NOT affiliated with any of these communities.
A warning about them, started over five years ago.
This is what it created:
A journalist wrote a long article about a weird, extreme group called the “Zizians.” They’re a mix of radical thinkers from the Rationalist movement—a community of people obsessed with using logic to solve big problems, like AI safety or moral philosophy. The Zizians, led by a person named Ziz, took these ideas to an extreme, combining them with unusual beliefs about morality, consciousness, and even Star Wars-like "Sith" philosophy.
This group has been connected to multiple violent incidents, including murders and standoffs with police. Some of its members have been arrested, gone into hiding, or mysteriously died. The author explains that Rationalist groups, while not inherently violent, often attract highly analytical but socially disconnected people, making them vulnerable to cult-like thinking.
The article also touches on how similar communities—like Effective Altruists and AI researchers—can sometimes create intense, insular environments that lead to extreme behavior. Basically, the Zizians are an example of how even smart, logical people can end up in very bizarre and dangerous places when they take ideas too far.
You could say "a group of people think that being smart gives them magic powers, and that most people are evil zombies, but they think everyone in their own special group is good and can do whatever they want" but you lose a lot of nuance.
I expect you are simply trolling, but for those that are not aware ELI5 has been defined in popular culture for well over a decade.
So these guys were being surveilled for being armed and decked out in tactical gear, so the authorities send in a lone traffic cop to pull them over? And predictably, the cop is killed.
This isn't the first time I've heard of this kind of thing happening. That agent was basically set up to die, sacrificed like a pawn by his superiors playing a sick game of chess. The same thing happened to Darian Jarott, who was directed by his boss to arrest an armed and dangerous meth smuggler without being briefed of the danger, despite the fact that the danger was clearly understood by his superiors (a tactical team with medics were stationed nearby, but Jarott was sent in alone without knowledge of this.) The meth smuggler stepped out of his truck with an AR-15, taking Jarott completely by surprise, and murdered him. The meth smuggler was then chased down and killed by the other officers and agents.
Do you think that if the meth smuggler had been met by two or more officers he would have acted differently?
Was there any indication the police was "sent" to pull them over, rather than some sort of routine traffic stop? The article mentions the DHS surveillance was only "periodic", which implied they weren't really keeping tabs on them 24/7.
It was more than one agent who pulled them over, and it isn't clear they were pulled over as a result of being put under surveillance.
It's a lot more likely that he just didn't know rather than some conspiracy for unknown purposes.
Having many adjectives is nice, because it allows everyone to make this story be about their favorite topic.
https://thepostmillennial.com/andy-ngo-reports-trans-terror-...
At every turn the purpose of the piece is demonize trans people, even if it got the facts right.
But regardless of his political opinions, has anything he said been false?
Of course, this only works as long as the reader is aware of the bias, so your comment is a valid warning in that respect.
This is absolutely nonsensical. No amount of watching InfoWars can help you understand global warming or the operations of FEMA.
Bad information isn't like the "picking stocks" problem where being reliably wrong can be mapped to being right. Enough bias just comprehensively ruins the data.
For example, not every article about the Zizians mentions their gender identity. But the right wing articles do. If you only read some news sources, you would miss this bit of information. Is it relevant to the story? Maybe, maybe not – that’s up to the reader to decide. Is it relevant to the narrative that will take hold as it propagates throughout social media? Yes absolutely. And the fact that only one side mentions it means it’s even more likely to become a central point of contention, because each side will weaponize it against the other. The right will claim the left is hiding it and the left will claim the right is unnecessarily elevating it. In the end, it will become the most controversial (and therefore popular) part of the narrative, and the hook of engagement bait that keeps the story going.
You wouldn’t be able to anticipate this if you only read a few mainstream left-leaning articles about the story. And there is value to anticipating these narratives because if you catch them early, you know to ignore them as they expand into a larger waste of time.