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pentti linkola
by Cletus Nelson (cletus@disinfo.net) - October 18, 2000
In a small lakefront dwelling amidst the sublime beauty of Finland's pristine forests, 68-year-old Pentti Linkola spends each day wishing for your death. Convinced that overpopulation presents the greatest danger to our fragile biosphere, the radical environmentalist rejects popular notions of compassion and love for his fellow man in favor of a darker vision, one that entails veritable mountains of human corpses.
"Man can be defined in any arbitrary number of ways, but to convey his most fundamental characteristic, he could be described with two words: too much," writes the eco-pragmatist. As one who believes another world war would be a "happy occasion for the planet," Linkola likens the current global situation to a sinking ship with only one remaining lifeboat. "Those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot." while "those who love and respect life will take the ship's ax and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides of the boat," he declares.
To chop the metaphorical hands from the gunwales, this outspoken opponent of Amnesty International and the Vatican advises an end to third-world aid, the introduction of mandatory abortions, and the creation of a totalitarian state with strict environmental laws enforced by a ruthless "green police." Farming and fishing will supplant modern capitalism, a strategy which Linkola believes will effectively neutralize that which Edward Abbey called the "Earth destroying juggernaut of Industrial civilization." Philosophically, his perceptions perhaps most closely resemble those of "Unabomber" Ted Kaczinski. Both consider technology a pernicious evil and urge an atavistic return to our pre-industrial agrarian past. "Every example throughout the history of humanity shows that only deprivation and struggle create a human life worthy of the name and that material welfare leads only to despair," Linkola explains.
Despite the harshness of his rhetoric and his strident attacks against consumer culture, the notorious eco-fascist remains a continued source of national pride in his beloved Finland. As one of the nation's most esteemed authors, he enjoys a large literary following and has been awarded the coveted Eino Leino prize for excellence in non-fiction writing. Ironically, his first publishedbook displayed an uncharacteristically optimistic outlook. Swept up in the ecological consciousness that sprang from the fervent utopianism of the 1960s, the young Linkola gained positive critical attention after penning a humanistic volume entitled Dreams of a Better World. Unfortunately, when his cherished hopes failed to materialize, the distraught activist reassessed man's relationship with nature and came out in favor of the latter, if necessary, to the exclusion of the former. This newfound radicalism was exhibited in 1979, when the "deep" ecologist dedicated an anthology of his writings to Andreas Baader and Ulride Meinhof of Germany's bomb-throwing Baader-Meinhof gang.
Today, there is no turning back as the cantankerous thinker envisions forming a small band of merciless eco-terrorists to dramatically reduce the population. "By sacrificing perhaps billions [we] might possibly save a million," he remarks.
Whether one considers Linkola's unique philosophy to be the ravings of a madman or the prescient words of a bold visionary, this strident defender of his beloved planet is by far one of the more extraordinary figures within the environmental milieu. And, as the earth continues to erode with each passing day, this modern prophet of doom will continue to wage his one-man battle against the teeming masses of humanity. This means you.
Michael Moynihan and Harri Heinonen provide the first English translation of Linkola's writing in the recently published anthology, Apocalypse Culture II (Feral House, 2000).
