I think one of the most underappreciated essays ever written about the rat scene is Ozy's "Rationalists and the Cultic Milieu" thingofthings.substack.… "Cultic" in this case means a specific academic thing about "stigmatized knowledge", not "cults". Ozy is also a big-name rat, so it's not like they're making the critique as an outsider. It gets at something similar to the points you're making here.

Ken has also been doing to great research into the Ziz stuff x.com/kenthecowboy_/sta… He's actually been going out and doing legwork, interviewing people, getting court documents, finding info that contradicts previous reporting. Really useful stuff.