Fake news reigns supreme. There are two influencers in the current society who abundantly make use of what we moderate activists call the “Putin Putsch”, namely Vladimir Putin and our radicalized emancipation colleagues. Vladimir has become good at it after years of experience, and in the USA, our radicalized colleagues are runner-up. How does it work and why is it harmful to people struggling with their sexual feelings and aspirations?

1. How the ‘Putin Putsch’ works

Here is Vladimir’s secret: it is not a “Putsch” (German word) or “coup d’état” (French word) for control of the government but a Putsch for control of the mind. Putin goes along with the narrative of his adversary, repeats it, but ever so casually replaces one or two words with its opposite. Then he carries on as if nothing has happened. He doesn’t twitch a muscle or blink an eye. It works like a charm.

Trust this former top Soviet spy and counterspy to come up with something like that. Faking things was his job. It is a powerful move and our radicalized emancipation colleagues are following suit.

Remember the Malaysia Airlines passenger plane, the MH17, drama of 2014? An airliner flies over Eastern Ukraine in times of war and gets shot down by a BUK ground-to-air missile. Western leaders in NL and AU demand an investigation of these atrocities committed by the Russian military or allied separatists who no doubt used Russian weapons. Putin replies that he could not agree more. “We need total transparency on this atrocity and we commit ourselves to fully cooperating on investigations of this Ukrainian cowardly onslaught on innocent Dutch and Australian passengers”. Have you noticed the sleight-of-hand?

He just changes a single word into its opposite and then carries on with the same narrative and in the same tone of voice as his enemy. Brilliant. And he gets away with it.

In Europe, we call it “the Putin Putsch”.

You merely swap a single word while keeping a straight face. Many people will hence agree with you because every word sounds kind of familiar. Those who have noticed the sleight-of-hand feel confused by two opposing rational bits of information. This causes uneasiness. The two rational contents are not resonating to the same beat: they are, what we call, dissonant. They do not match. The state of mind that arises is called cognitive dissonance. You now cannot rationally make up your mind because the two claims are not compatible with one another.

Psychological research has proven that people nevertheless make up their minds anyway. They do so irrationally. They cannot tolerate the uneasy feeling.

On Psychology Today, we read:

“Though a person may not always resolve cognitive dissonance, the response to it may range from ignoring the source of it to changing  one’s beliefs or behavior to eliminate the conflict.”

It is at that very moment that they can be manipulated if you organize the manipulation keenly and cunningly. Research has shown that 90% of the population will then bite the bait of irrational and emotional signals when they are presented.

How? You can play a nice tune in the background, preferably a national anthem or a familiar pop song, you can drape a flag behind you, in videos you can mix tear-jerking photos of a woman mentally breaking down or a child with big sad eyes much like Walt Disney’s Bambi, after which you appeal to the heart. Whatever you do, do not make it rational. Because if you deliver rational arguments, you may end up in a debate. And once you are in a debate, you may lose the debate.

Bottom-line: if you do not want to lose a debate, then don’t make it rational. If you successfully frustrate a rational approach, 90% of the audience will resort to irrationality to ease their mind.

2. The power of irrationality

What sorts of irrationality are most effective? The study of Mass Psychology started with Sigmund Freud who suggested that persons in a crowd find their superego or moral principles being displaced by the more powerful masses or more influential group leader.

Later on, it has been demonstrated that this mass audience preferably makes up its mind along the lines of solidarity, group-think, “that’s my crowd, that’s us”, “communities” and “identities”. And if there are no communities, then become an activist and invent them, propagate them, and enforce them! By law, if at all possible: the most cunning trick of them all. You will become an influencer.

Sit back, enjoy the fun, and pat each other on the back. The notion of “our community” and “my identity” always comes in handy when your pressure group is in a tough spot. It is a good investment. Give the folks an identity, call them a community, tell them you love them, and then get out of the way and let the magic happen.

We, moderate secular activists, say: improve the world and start with yourself: take a good long look at yours truly. What am I doing as a person? What are we doing as a movement? And what is all this ‘homosexuality’ of ours, anyway? What on earth are we trying to prove with Gay Pride Parades wearing clothes and make-up we never wear otherwise, just to annoy? What’s up?

3. The mass psychology of Pride Parades

These parades have morphed into the biggest array of Putin Putsches in the West. All debate has been transformed along the lines of irrationality. We see 6 to 7 colors without a rational debatable message attached (they form a projection screen), flags (preferably king-size and immersing the surroundings as far as the eye can see; very intimidating), music (The Village People singing “YMCA” or Queen singing “Another one bites the dust”, preferably very loud), smiling faces, a community spirit (fake or otherwise), and no-brainer one-liner slogans which cannot be contradicted, for example: “Love”, “Peace”, “The right to exist”, and soppy close-up photos of two intertwined young girls’ hands. Can’t go wrong with this setup. This is as irrational as they come and the setup is foolproof.

Remember that radical activists do not tolerate any form of criticism. No criticism is necessary or justified with people like us, so they feel. Kate Kendall, the well-known CEO of the lesbian law firm National Center of Lesbian Rights, San Francisco, even invented and trademarked the expression “BornPerfect©”.

They are increasingly trying to replace the American flag with a rainbow incorporated into it. This can truly be seen as an irrational signal to seize or overthrow the American government, a real “Putsch” or “coup d’état”. And the non-verbal image is not up for debate. Imagine another minority pressure group, ISIS, doing that! All hell would break loose.

4. The irrationality of psychiatrists, organized in a mass

Putin Putsches have become the weapon of choice by our radicalized colleagues and the organizations that they have infiltrated and taken over.

A fine example is the American Psychiatric Association. What happened? The whole topic of (homo)sexuality was thrown out of medical care in 1973. A small fringe of radicalized gay psychiatrists then formed a task force that keeps on delivering activist messages about this subject on behalf of the general assembly with no internal contradiction because the subject had been dropped as a goal for research and class education.

They meet in Democratic Party strongholds like San Francisco or New York.

Outside the APA, research institutes on homosexuality at various universities have demonstrated, over the last 30 years, that sexuality is fluid and changeable. To counteract this, the activists within the APA resort to a Putin Putsch and solemnly declare the opposite with no rational scientific papers to rely on.

The audiences are predictably confused after which the APA activists pronounce a few no-brainer and one-liner slogans. Audiences then make up their minds without realizing that they are acting irrationally.

In the APA 2014 Position Statement on Issues Related to Homosexuality, we read:

“The American Psychiatric Association believes that the causes of sexual orientation (whether homosexual or heterosexual) are not known at this time.”

What a lie. This “position statement” defies the vast number of scientific articles on the subject and relegates them to the rubbish bin, a Putin Putsch. Note how the activists do not say that they can prove the statement; they merely say “we believe” (read their statement carefully). It is an expression of a belief system and not a scientific system. The APA has become a policy factory producing policy statements, based on opinions and internal power-play in a heavily politicized and 50%-vs-50% divided superpower country.

Out of disgust, more than one-third of the APA members have resigned from membership since 2010 because the polarizing political atmosphere is stifling. Almost all the leavers are conservative (conservatives form 60% of the US population). There are five other psychiatric associations now in the USA to choose from and the APA has forfeited its dominant role.

We know very well that heterosexual behavior is an expression of the working of genes, a hardware issue as it is in all mammals, and we know that the sexualization of the same sex is a software issue. It is a coping mechanism. There is nothing fixed about the existence of same-sex attractions as though it were hardwired sexuality. The APA policy statement even says so itself further on in the document if you read carefully:

“(Same-sex attractions) likely are multifactorial including biological and behavioral roots which may vary between different individuals and may even vary over time”.

This means then that the APA does not support the notion of a separate “homosexuality” which is the same for everyone and which is immutable, but that it varies between different people and varies over time in the same individual. Hardware cannot do that. Only software can do that. Therefore, homosexuality is not, and cannot, be a hardware issue but exclusively a software issue. Only when it is software can feelings exhibit such an array of staggeringly different expressions in persons and can they vary over time in the same person. If it is hardware, then it must be consistent. And it isn’t. The APA admits to that.

This, then, is the end of the born-that-way ideology and belief system. It is not who you are, but who you have become. And it can vary over time. It is not fixed. Says even the APA. They try to pull a Putin Putsch on the audience.

5. Smoking out the Putin Putsch

Let us do some more close-reading. The APA states in its 2014 summary of all its position statements over the previous decade:

“No credible evidence exists that any mental health intervention can reliably and safely change sexual orientation; nor, from a mental health perspective does sexual orientation need to be changed”.

Surprisingly, this notion is based on the 2011 APA document about the appropriate response to people struggling with sexual orientation issues. This latter document was vehemently opposed and countered by a 138-page document of the researchers at NARTH (Journal of Human Sexuality, Vol. 9). No one has denied the truth of the NARTH document since then, but the APA pulled a Putin Putsch. The APA has cunningly ignored and removed it from public view. The APA does not mention the document ever since it was published. We feel that they should have reacted to it, which is the appropriate scientific response to criticism.

The APA makes a major ideological mistake because it removes the notion of bisexuality from view. There is no mention of it. It is staunch heterophobia staring you in the face. What happens is the following:

The APA regards homosexuality as an “orientation”, that is to say as an immutable trait of unknown origin. Our stance is: specific “orientations” that exclude other sets of feelings or aspirations do not exist in the first place. The term is a fabricated one; see our article of 2019.

The APA then writes:

“The American Psychiatric Association believes that the causes of sexual orientation (whether homosexual or heterosexual) are not known at this time and likely are multifactorial including biological and behavioral roots which may vary between different individuals and may even vary over time.”

Put your Kozak headdress on! Here is what Putin Putsches do to a healthy sense of logical reasoning:

First, they say they do not know anything about causes, thereby creating a curtain of mist, then they say they are multifactorial (quite a surprise when you first say you do not know anything), then they say the roots are not consistently present because they vary. Sorry, no, they say that they “may vary”, in other words, they are not sure whether anything is varying, they could vary but perhaps they do not vary; then they say they “may vary” over time. This means it doesn’t vary over time. Or perhaps it does. Then they introduce the ill-defined term “likely”. I am likely to win the jackpot. Science at its finest.

Can you still make sense of this Putin Putsch? No, and that is what a Putin Putsch is all about: creating confusion so that people will subsequently make up their minds along the lines of solidarity.

So, the causes vary between people but can also change within people over time. What a remarkable conclusion, given the fact that they say that these roots are not known (first sentence). So, the causes are unknown but they vary, we know for sure. Or rather, they “may” vary, meaning we are not so sure. And what those roots are, the APA admits, they have no clue.

So, what is the APA talking about? They say that they haven’t the faintest idea.

This means we are led to believe that there are unknown causes of an immutable condition and that these unknown causes vary between individuals and vary over time. How can anything immutable vary over time? The only logical conclusion of this prose is, in our opinion, that given all the varying which is present, sorry, ‘may’ be present, that it is the orientation which is doing all the varying. In other words, sexual orientation is mutable. Then it makes sense. Phew.

Then they pretend to be scientists.

6. The Declaration on orientations

In the Declaration, we read:

“Sexual fluidity happens in both directions but this is being ignored. Across the world, robust studies have established that sexual fluidity can happen in both directions, that change to or towards heterosexual attraction is common, and this is not limited to the ‘mostly-heterosexual’.

“Governments need to protect the rights of sexual minorities to choose opposite-sex relationships as well as same-sex relationships – and not to be pathologized in doing so. Researchers, therapists, and clients should be able, in principle, to identify factors that are leading to these changes all around us and use this knowledge to help people who are desiring to broaden their scope of possibilities”.

7. Conclusion

Heterophobia may not reign supreme even though you have been labeled as “coming out gay”. You may perhaps feel uncomfortable with the thought of sexual intimacy with the opposite sex, but is it the task of the law to help you stay in that predicament?

Surely this is homosexism, insisting that the world is divided and will remain divided forevermore. Homosexism does not accept a multitude of feelings and possibilities coming and going later on in life in the same person.

Anyone who feels uncomfortable with this rigid homosexism or who objects to it, is now facing prison sentences across the globe for even saying, thinking so, communicating so.

Science in the USA has become a political arena. The activists are going global. Therapists are being thrown before the bus. 10 years prison in Melbourne, Australia, for defying radical homosexism. The UN is now also  under siege. The ancient Roman Colosseum with its blood-drenched gladiator fights is back in business. Lions, anyone?

To be continued.

Job Berendsen, MD.