Imagine a man who wants to be a woman taking his atheistic, we-know-better-than-you "effective altruism," AI doomerism, trans confusion, and veganism, and mixing it with a Manson Family-esque death cult. Instead of LSD, the group is fueled by trans hormones and hate. They see "transphobia" wherever they go. And people die.
Say hello to the Zizians, a trans death cult formed after 2016 in, naturally, San Francisco.
Comprised of book-smart, tech-savvy Silicon Valley rejects, the cult was begun by a man who hated God but wanted to be the Almighty, Jack LaSota, who called himself "Ziz."
His dozen or so followers moved to hideouts, leaky boats, and other people's property all over the country, leaving eight bodies in their wake.
Andy Ngo tells their story as only he can. The independent reporter who wrote Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy now turns his attention to an Antifa-like trans offshoot in his book The Zizians: Inside a Trans Death Cult.
Ngo's road to telling this story starts with his coverage of Antifa in Portland, Ore.
Andy isn't afraid to "see what he sees." (That's from one of my favorite Ronald Reagan quotes: "Don't be afraid to see what you see.") Ngo has always given factual information in his news stories and writings, but in recent years, he has begun to explain how these things fit in a broader societal context.
He and I are from the same town, Portland. Despite our age difference and backgrounds, we know some of the same people. One of our mutual friends is Mike Strickland, who in 2016 was arguably the nation's top independent reporter. His work frequently ended up on national TV, news stories, and blogs. His Laughing at Liberals channel made him a target of the far left in Portland.
Mike showed up to all the cockamamie conferences held in "progressive" Portland. They told on themselves. Mike made sure to share the news. But Mike always had an edge, a point of view.
When the Portland "justice" system put Mike on ice — taking away his cameras, voice, and way to defend himself against the violent mob, his gun — Andy ascended.
Meanwhile, Ngo's ability to tell the truth without fear or favor, as they say, has landed him in the hospital on more than one occasion. Antifa members take umbrage at people showing them breaking the law in a way that a smart cop might be able to connect to the person behind the mask.
Projection: If ICE Agents Did What the Leftist Mob Is Doing to Them in Oregon, They'd Be in Prison
Ngo fled to the U.K. but returned every so often to do his street reporting on Antifa. When the "Summer of Love" riots and mayhem occurred in 2020, Andy began to see a pattern.
Before Oregon stopped allowing widespread dissemination of mug shots, Andy would compile the photos of the latest batch of Antifa losers who'd been arrested (and usually released without charges).
And he saw what he saw: Pink-haired, gender-confused, violent, trans bullies committing acts of violence. They were Antifa's form of cannon fodder. Angry, confused cannon fodder.
These violent trans people were hidden behind euphemisms and intentional blurring — lying — in police reports, press releases, and news stories.
But the pictures didn't lie.
Who remembers my Antifa mugshots reporting? During the 2020-21 BLM-Antifa riots, I did the heavy work of requesting hundreds of public records of criminal arrestees and posted them on here. Oregon Democrats changed the law after that to protect leftist rioters. https://t.co/wfJQpZnsJy
— Andy Ngo (@MrAndyNgo) April 30, 2025
Ngo, however, began telling the raw truth about angry, confused, he/she assaulters, murderers, and anti-social lawbreakers. Texas. Tennessee. Portland.
The story of the Zizians, their cult, and legal entanglements was a marriage of Ngo's experience in Antifa, street reporting, and true crime.
Here's an excerpt from his new book, The Zizians: Inside a Trans Death Cult.
What began as scattered incidents started to turn into something more coherent.
A pattern.
This investigation examines a group of young people who believed that they could rewrite the rules of reality. That they could overcome their own sex and biology. That death itself could be defeated. And that the world could be “saved,” if only the right people were in control.
What they built instead was a system that justified anything. They became a cult seeking self-optimization—a cult built around a transgender figure called Ziz.
And that is how people started to die.
This story involves a Manson Family–like trans cult, deadly violence, human experimentation, cover-ups, staged deaths, and dramatic escapes from justice. Over nine years, it spread across the United States before collapsing in a dramatic interstate manhunt involving multiple federal and state agencies.
Inside the cabin there were signs something had happened there.
There is so much more about the Zizians and, like Antifa's cannon fodder, little justice.
I talked with Andy about his new book on the Adult in the Room Podcast on Tuesday.