RIP Zman: Last of the Old Order

On the death of a dissident blogger and the twilight of independent thought

Zman, a long-running dissident blogger known for his relentless output and paleocon worldview, died suddenly at age 58. In this layered eulogy, I reflect on his legacy, his limitations, and what his death signals for the vanishing world of independent political writing. Drawing comparisons to Lawrence Auster and archetypal closure in Jung’s Liber Novus, this post becomes not just a farewell to a man, but an elegy for a dying form of thought - and a meditation on fate, generational death, and symbolic time.

I received bad news yesterday morning from a post by

AMRX Mark II

about the passing of the blogger Zman. I wasn’t sure if he meant it metaphorically (as in: Zman was dead to him ideologically) or literally. But a check of Zman’s blog confirmed it - no post yesterday, a silence where there had always been signal. Zman was a machine: five posts a week, premium content on Sundays, no lapses for a decade. His discipline was impressive, and even when I disagreed I respected his rhythm. He was the last of a type, which we’ll get to. As I noted in the immediate aftermath, the abruptness of Zman’s silence felt off - like static interrupting a long-wave transmission that had never missed a beat. In some ways his consistent dissident output reminded me of the late and great Lawrence Auster of View From the Right fame, whose passed away in 2013 and whose website is still preserved in amber here. I have a bunch of drafts ready to post (including one about Auster), and I already did a recent eulogy about my former stepfather, so I’m kind of bummed that I have to do another so soon thereafter.

Anyway the comments of his latest post indicated that he died suddenly of “natural causes”, and the death was announced by RamZPaul on Twitter here. I did a Note about the death here, and I tried leaving a comment on his blog (which is stuck in “awaiting approval” hell), but I had some additional comments that I thought were worth typing out. Here’s what Zman looked like (on the right), per a Tweet by

Peter R. Quiñones

. Nice and clean physiognomy, decently dressed, sober in energy:

Back in 2022 a couple of odious freaks from the SPLC outed Zman, which you can see here. It stated: “John Christopher Zander, 55, a software salesman residing in the Baltimore suburbs, has inhabited The Z Man persona since at least 2013, based on a Hatewatch review of public records and leaked documents containing biographical data that match Zander with the Z Man persona.” That would place Zman today at around 58 years old — very young to die suddenly of natural causes. Zman correctly did not respond to the outing and any controversy around it didn’t go further - it probably helped Zman that he was a software salesman and probably more resistant to cancellation than other dissidents who rely on corporate jobs.

Regarding Zman’s content, I followed him for many years, never reading him daily but oftentimes reading him a couple times a week. His was a standard paleocon view which was distrustful of Israel - it was not conspiracy theory laden but it was skeptical and distrustful of establishment narratives. I felt like I outgrew his worldview over time because he was unwilling or unable to understand the structure of the modern world which was above the level of the nation state, which led him to believe (as does fellow dinosaur Andrew Anglin) that stuff like the Ukraine/Russia war was/is on the up-and-up instead of an intentional gentile bloodletting by the international financiers behind both cocaine-addled Zelensky and Putin.

Someone in the comments of his post said that he didn’t want to get the heart attack jabs (“COVID vaccine”) but he may have gotten it in order to be able to travel; someone who apparently knew him well responded that he did not get it. This is always a question to ask among deaths these days because the establishment has covered up how deadly and lethal it is, both immediately after the fact (and I know multiple people who were injured by it and one who died from it) and causing all sorts of weird immune issues and turbo cancers down the road. It’s also possible, although pretty unlikely, that something more nefarious was afoot.¹ Whether from natural causes or iatrogenic interference, the opacity around death itself now mirrors our epistemological condition: nothing is trusted; everything is suspect.

But it’s likely that he just died of “natural causes”, a sudden heart attack. Men face the greatest risk of heart attack between the ages of 55 and 65, with the risk curve rising sharply before that and plateauing or even slightly declining after 70 for certain subgroups. This is something that one of my former mentors, a brilliant man in many ways and a health aficionado, who worked out daily for decades and who ate extremely cleanly, emphasized to me many times, although he also died young (from the stress and shame from divorce plus a stroke). Here's how it breaks down:

• Before 45: Risk is low but rising. Most heart attacks in this age range are due to genetics, smoking, drug use, or severe lifestyle/dietary issues. Rare, but often more fatal when they occur, such as what happened to Sylvester Stallone’s son who died of atherosclerosis at the age of 36 in 2012. According to autopsies of young men who died in the Korean and Vietnam wars, a significant minority had major atherosclerosis - see here, here, and here (the last one regarding general population youth).

  

  Sage Stallone

• 45–54: Risk increases steadily, especially for men with risk factors (smoking, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, high LDL, etc.).

• 55–65: This is the peak risk window for men. Atherosclerosis (plaque buildup) tends to become symptomatic. Hormonal protective factors (like higher testosterone and DHEA earlier in life) begin to decline.

• 65–74: Still high risk, but the curve flattens somewhat. Many men at this age are already being treated for cardiovascular conditions, which can reduce new incidence.

• 75+: Paradoxically, the risk of first-time heart attack declines slightly, partly due to survivor bias - statins, beta-blockers, and aspirin reduce risk, while the survivor effect means those most susceptible may have already experienced events. Lifestyle changes (e.g., reduced stress, better diet) also play a role. However, overall cardiovascular risk remains high.

Someone left a comment that Zman did a yearly physical, which seems right given how nicely he dressed himself, and it’s common to get a CAC score to see what your artery buildup is, but the science is really not exact and you can have no artery buildup and still suffer a heart attack - science is still rudimentary in a lot of ways. Once one hits middle age, the presence of death feels ever closer, eventually triggering a decrease of ego and the rise of the Self, culminating in the now famous midlife crisis as previously discussed here.

In a way Zman is one of the last of the old-timers. As one of the comments noted on his post:

I find myself mourning not only Z and the end of this blog but also the death of blogs. 5 years ago there were blogs I could go to for my bad thoughts fix. Z’s was the last. Heartiste gave up when his blog was Shoahed by WordPress. Dahlrock retired his. Roosh gave his sites up to live a private life after being censored and becoming a Christian. TDS and AA have been completely demonetized and censored to the point that AA recently threw in the towel. Z was one of the last blogs standing. There is still Moon of Alabama and Sonar21 but they don’t have near the scope of Zman and TDS. The other wrong thinkers are being herded to X and Substack to get an audience and make money. At X, ones who notice the JQ are already being demonetized and shadow banned. Once democrats get in Substack will come under attack. Besides every institution eventually becomes converged. In my more pessimistic moments I feel that we are seeing the last flickers of independent thought before total darkness. But the future is always different than we think it will be.

This in turn reminds me of a moment in Gore Vidal’s wonderful novel Julian, about Julian the Apostate, which I previously covered in this two parter. In the scene Julian is having a conversation with the Hierophant of Greece, who was the holiest of men and the custodian and interpreter of the mysteries of Eleusis which went back at least 2,000 years or more. Julian told the Hierophant that it was his hope to support Hellenism in its war with the Galileans, but the Hierophant responded that the Hellenic world will die and that Christianity will rise, that it is the nature of things:

[The Hierophant] was abrupt. “It is too late,” he said, echoing Prohaeresius. “Nothing you can do will change what is about to happen.”

I was not expecting such a response. “Do you know the future?”

“I am Hierophant,” he said simply. “The last Hierophant of Greece. I know many things, all tragic.”

I refused to accept this. “But how can you be the last? Why, for centuries…”

“Prince, these things are written at the beginning. No one may tamper with fate. When I die, I shall be succeeded not by a member of our family but by a priest from another sect. He will be in name, but not in fact, the final Hierophant. Then the temple at Eleusis will be destroyed - all the temples in all of Greece will be destroyed. The barbarians will come. The Christians will prevail. Darkness will fall.”

“Forever?”

“Who can say? The goddess has shown me no more than what I have told you. With me, the true line ends. With the next Hierophant, the mysteries themselves will end….Whether you are Emperor or not, Eleusis will be in ruins before the century is done.”

I looked at him closely…despite his terrible conviction, this small fat man with his protuberant eyes and fat hands was perfectly composed. I have never known such self-containment, even in Constantius.

“I refuse to believe,” I said at last, “that there is nothing we can do.”

He shrugged. “We shall go on as long as we can, as we always have.” He looked at me solemnly. “You must remember that because the mysteries come to an end makes them no less true. Those who were initiated will at least be fortunate in the underworld. Of course one pities those who come after us. But what is to be must be….I shall instruct you myself. We shall need several hours a day. Come to my house tonight.” With a small bow he withdrew.²

In the same way the world is rapidly transitioning to something radically different than what came before - the digital panopticon presided over by a woke AI, CBDCs, and social credit scores, perhaps culminating in some sort of anti-Christ. However, at the same time, the symbols underlying these values are themselves changing, as Carl Jung wrote about in Liber Novus/the Red Book.³ In an excellent essay on it and the individuation process, Jungian scholar George Bright in Harvest magazine, 2024, discusses the ongoing transvaluation of Christian values in the new Aquarius epoch:

A recurrent theme in Liber Novus is that the age of belief, with its need for teachers and leaders, has now ended and we are on the threshold of the age of knowledge. Rather than attempting to accept religious teachings (“belief”), it is now up to every individuating person to engage to the best of one’s ability with the divine and daimonic purposive mindful energies which from 1919 Jung calls “archetypal” and to work out our own models of the human condition and of the Cosmos from personal experience….

In the Prologue of Book One Jung refers to the Christian trio of “The way, the truth and the life.” When one has read the whole work, one is in a position to understand his re-definition of all three concepts:

“The Way” now means the demand to travel the way of individuation if one is impelled by the archetypal forces to embark on this way.

“The Truth” refers to Jung’s new valorisation of knowing over believing (faith in the Christian sense) or understanding (intellect as the final arbiter)….The key now is personal experience of the divine/archetypal. Only knowledge of this kind is of real value and on the basis of such direct experiential knowledge, it is incumbent on the individual to form his or her own cosmology, not to ape or imitate at second hand the way and ways of conceptualizing it of Jung or of anyone else.

“The Life” now means that the aim of life is no longer the Christian aim of goodness but the new aim of wholeness. Evil now has to be lived, not suppressed or avoided. This does not imply that anything goes, but that the moral imperative now devolves on the individual conscience. The moral demand is now higher, more intense, more paradoxical and more humanly impossible than in the era guided by the Christian moral law….

I do not think that Jung’s exoteric writings [i.e. psychotherapy writings] can be regarded as the ultimate guidebook to this terrain. I base my claim on the view which I think underpins all Jung’s work that the closer we approach the truth, the more we enter the realm of paradox and ambiguity…The closer we approach truth, the more we leave the world of order and enter the world of chaos….

It will be interesting to see how these trends continue to manifest or how they change in the upcoming years. I really don’t think what develops will be within Zman’s understanding, but who knows? Maybe I’m wrong.

Lastly, I hope that Zman’s funeral is going to be public so that I may attend and pay my respects. If it is, someone please let me know via a DM or in the comments. Lawrence Auster’s funeral was public and I thought about going at the time, but didn’t, and I regret not going. I both liked and respected Zman, and one should pay respect to the dead who kept writing until they couldn’t.

Thanks for reading, and see you at the next one.

1. The CIA and FBI love killing dissidents, and with no prominent dissidents in U.S. or world affairs these days, perhaps they’ve taken to smushing gnats like Zman (gnat in the sense of having no political power and no movement) with heart attack guns just out of spite or to keep their skills sharp. After all, Andrew Breitbart died of a “heart attack” at 44…

2. The Hierophant’s calm in Julian is not despair or passivity, but rather the composure of someone who has seen how the deeper structure of history works - not as a straight line, but as a great wheel. In this cyclical view, symbols, gods, and ideas rise to prominence in one epoch and fade into the background in the next, only to return again in transformed guises. This pattern is reflected in the succession of astrological ages:

The Age of Taurus (approx. 4000–2000 BC) was marked by widespread bull symbolism including fertility cults, bull worship in Minoan Crete, and sacred bovines in Egypt and Mesopotamia. It was the age of agriculture, earth reverence, and matriarchal mystery. In myth, this corresponds not to the Olympians, but to the older chthonic forces such as the Titans or primordial deities, who represent raw, elemental power.
The Age of Aries (approx. 2000 BC–0 AD/30 AD) brought the rise of sky gods, conquest, and monotheistic sacrifice reflected in figures like Yahweh, Ares/Mars, and Moses.
The Age of Pisces (approx. 0 AD/30 AD - 2000/2030 AD) introduced the image of the suffering redeemer - Christ, compassion, the fish as symbol and the turn inward toward the soul’s salvation.

Each age carries its own god-image, its own dominant symbols. The old ways don’t disappear - rather, they descend into the unconscious, waiting for the wheel to turn. The Hierophant sees this, not as abstract theory but through lived symbolic experience. That’s why he isn’t shaken. His stillness is not resignation, but a deeper kind of faith, one grounded in vision. He knows the mysteries will end in this cycle, but they will return in another. His task is to hold the line until then. I may cover this idea more fully in a future post.

3. Which was not published until 2009, 48 years after Jung’s death, as the world was not ready for it.