The most notorious man in Finland

Pentti Linkola is easily the most notorious man in Finland. Occasionally, he is mentioned in Swedish newspapers, too. The first time I've heard about him was about 30 years ago! Since Finnish isn't even remotely close to Swedish, I have never been able to read the man's works, however. "Can life prevail?" is apparently the only English translation of Linkola available.

Linkola calls himself a deep ecologist, but there is very little spirituality in his message. In fact, there is none. Instead, we get a melange of love for nature, attacks on modernity, and calls for an authoritarian Green state, amidst a lot of misanthropy. Linkola even supports al-Qaeda's attacks on the World Trade Center. It's the misanthropic and authoritarian streaks that makes Linkola notorious, but these very traits are sometimes difficult to take seriously. Indeed, the American editors suspect that Linkola might be something of an trickster. Even Linkola himself implies as much in one of his articles.

My first memory of Linkola (around 1985) is a weird proposal that a Green Finland should get hold of nuclear weapons and wage war against the rest of the world! This book also contains proposals difficult to take seriously, including a call for a World Government to stop overpopulation, a proposal hardly compatible with the pro-farmer localism and nature nostalgia otherwise espoused by the author. And what are we to make of the following programmatic statement: "The people most responsible for the present economic growth and competition will be transferred to the mountains and highlands to be re-educated. To be employed for this purpose will mostly be ex-sanatoriums with a healthy climate located on pine ridges". Rather than sending them to the salt mines, then?

In all fairness, it should be noted that most of "Can life prevail?" deal with other and more normal issues. Linkola writes about his life as a fisherman and fish salesman, about his hikes in the Finnish woods, and he discusses issues such as vegetarianism, animal rights and conservation. Still, he does manage to crack a few provocative ideas here as well, as when he proposes the extermination of all domestic cats. He doesn't like jays, ravens and gulls either. Needless to say, Linkola is no vegetarian. He (correctly) points out that a hard life without technology would entail hunting and meat eating. More surprising, given his overall misanthropy, is the quasi-feminist idea that women, really, are much better than men! Another provocation?

I'm not sure what to make of Pentti Linkola, the resident eco-fascist of the Finnish forests, and he probably is the kind of guy who would drive most people mad. Still, a big thanks to Integral Tradition Publishing (sounds scary) for making the thoughts of this log cabin philosopher available in an intelligible language...