Academic Sergei Markov absurdly claimed on prime-time state TV that Ukraine cooperates with Neuro-Linguistic Programming to brainwash soldiers who become homosexual, zombie-like, and invincible.
by Massimo Introvigne
Do you know why Ukraine not only resisted mighty Russian army but was actually able to launch a counter-offensive? If you follow Russian media, you have your answer. The first line of the Ukrainian counter-offensive is composed by “gay super-soldiers” created through sophisticated “cultic brainwashing” techniques.
It looks like a joke, and a bad taste one. Unfortunately, it is not treated as a joke in Russia. What went viral in August is an interview to the state-owned Russiya-1 TV channel by Sergei Markov, who is both a professor at Moscow State University and the director of the Institute of Political Studies at Moscow State Institute of Political Relations. He is also co-chair of the National Strategic Council of Russia and known as a personal friend of Putin.
Markov started by asking “Have you heard of neuro-linguistic programming?” Perhaps most Russians didn’t, unless they read the anti-cult websites. Neuro-linguistic programming (NPL) is a technique aimed at improving communication and personal development developed in the 1970s in the United States by Richard Bandler and John Grinder. Although opinions vary on its effectiveness, it has been adopted in a variety of programs, including some organized within mainline religions. Indeed, it was its adoption by Orthodox priests in Russia that led Russian anti-cultists such as Alexander Dvorkin to attack it as a “cult.”
Building on these accusations, Markov now claims that the Ukrainian Army cooperates with NPL and other “cults” to produce zombified super-soldiers, “cultists ready to sacrifice themselves” and not afraid of dying.
He adds, however, a bizarre details. These “cultic” super-soldiers are brainwashed to become gay—because, he explains, the Ukrainians have studied the history of Ancient Greece and determined that the best and almost invincible Greek soldiers were homosexual Spartans.
The zombie-like cultic-gay super-soldiers are an easier explanation of the Ukrainian counter-offensive than the inherent weakness and lack of motivations of the Russian army. That such idiotic theories are taken seriously and spread by mainline media is another sign of the intellectual decadence of Putin’s Russia.
Massimo Introvigne (born June 14, 1955 in Rome) is an Italian sociologist of religions. He is the founder and managing director of the Center for Studies on New Religions (CESNUR), an international network of scholars who study new religious movements. Introvigne is the author of some 70 books and more than 100 articles in the field of sociology of religion. He was the main author of the Enciclopedia delle religioni in Italia (Encyclopedia of Religions in Italy). He is a member of the editorial board for the Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion and of the executive board of University of California Press’ Nova Religio. From January 5 to December 31, 2011, he has served as the “Representative on combating racism, xenophobia and discrimination, with a special focus on discrimination against Christians and members of other religions” of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). From 2012 to 2015 he served as chairperson of the Observatory of Religious Liberty, instituted by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in order to monitor problems of religious liberty on a worldwide scale.
