Pentti Linkola

Pentti Linkola

Kaarlo Pentti Linkola (born December 7, 1932 in Helsinki) is a radical Finnish environmentalist who has often been accused of ecofascism. He has written widely about his ideas and is well-known in Finland. He lives a materially very simple life and works as a professional fisherman. Linkola is a misanthropist who blames humans for the destruction of the environment and he has promoted ideas such as genocide for saving the environment and to keep the population in control. He strongly promotes deindustrialization. His ideal of society is a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by a small educated elite, where the majority of the population has the living standards of the Middle Ages, where consumption is limited only to renewable resources, where "defective" people are killed.

Life

Linkola grew up in Helsinki, Finland. His father Kaarlo Linkola was the Rector of Helsinki University and his mother's father Hugo Suolahti had worked as the Chancellor of the same university. Pentti Linkola chose not to continue his zoological and botanical studies after his first year. It has been said that he became a free naturalist. During these years he wrote the Suuri lintukirja ("Great Bird Book") (1955) with O. Hilden.

Linkola's first political publication was the pamphlet Isänmaan ja ihmisen puolesta ("For the Fatherland and Human") (1960), in which he spoke strongly for pacifism and encouraged conscientious objection. He has many friends but has suffered from depression.

Linkola is known for his deep love towards birds. In his writings Linkola often expresses his admiring feelings towards forests and nature in general. He advocates the destruction of cats, minks and some other species in Finland that he considers as foreign and destructive to the Finnish nature.

Ideas

In the essay collection Unelmat paremmasta maailmasta ("Dreams about a Better World") (1971) he wrote for the first time of his ecological attitudes. He has continued to speak against the modern western way of life and the overuse of natural resources, and his latest books Johdatus 1990-luvun ajatteluun ("Introduction to the Thinking of the 1990s") (1989) and Voisiko elämä voittaa ("Could Life Win") (2004) are collections of his writings that have been published in various Finnish newspapers and magazines. Lately he has provoked controversy by explicitely admiring Nazi-Germany as well as expressing support for the Baader-Meinhof Group. Over the years, he has often been accused of being an "eco-fascist".

As a philosopher Linkola can be described as a biocentric empirist. He demands that man return to a smaller ecological niche and abandon modern technology and the pursuit of economic progress. Sometimes however, he has said that the good society should have high military technology in order to defend itself from being conquered by non-environmental societies. He does not, however, explain how it is simultaneously feasible to maintain such technology without a modern economy. Linkola considers population growth the biggest threat to life on Earth. He advocates eugenics and genocide as a means to combat overpopulation. He has suggested that big cities should be attacked with nuclear weapons. Linkola has described humans as the cancer of nature. When some particular war has started somewhere in the world, he has often given statements that the war is good since it decreases population.

Guru status

Pentti Linkola has encountered a lot of opposition to his criticism of the affluent western society, but many look up to him as a sort of guru, largely because he lives as he teaches. He doesn't own a car or have running water. He used to earn his living by fishing from a rowing boat and selling the fish from door to door with a horse. He is now entitled to a pension but he continues to fish during wintertime.

Bibliography

• Linkola, Pentti & O. Hilden: Suuri Lintukirja. Otava 1955, renewed edition 1962.
• Isänmaan ja ihmisen puolesta: Mutta ei ketään vastaan. Fourth edition. Helsinki: Suomen sadankomitealiitto, 1981 (third edition 1970).
• Linkola, Pentti: Pohjolan linnut värikuvin: Elinympäristö. Levinneisyys. Muutto. Otava 1963-67.
• Linkola, Pentti: Unelmat paremmasta maailmasta. Fourth edition. Porvoo: WSOY, 1990.
• Linkola, Pentti: Toisinajattelijan päiväkirjasta. Porvoo: WSOY, 1979.
• Linkola, Pentti & Osmo Soininvaara: Kirjeitä Linkolan ohjelmasta. Porvoo: WSOY, 1986.
• Linkola, Pentti: Johdatus 1990-luvun ajatteluun. Porvoo: WSOY, 1989.
• Ekologiseen elämäntapaan: johdantoartikkeli. Yliopistopaino, 1996.
• Linkola, Pentti: Voisiko elämä voittaa. Helsinki: Tammi, 2004.

Also:

• Kämäräinen, Kauko: Linkola, oikeinajattelija. Tampere: Määrämitta, 1992.
• Alén, Eero: Linkolan soutajan päiväkirja. Turku: Sammakko, 2006.

External links

• Plausible Futures Newsletter Traces Linkola's career in the Green movement, and the connections between fascism and ecology (he has often been called an "eco-fascist" - some say he styles himself one).
• Church of Euthanasia reports a Wall Street Journal-Europe interview in which he expresses the view that World War III would be: "a happy occasion for the planet.... If there were a button I could press, I would sacrifice myself without hesitating, if it meant millions of people would die."
• Finnish-English translation project of his 2004 book: Voisiko elämä voittaa A project aiming at bringing writings of Linkola to a wider audience.
• Pentti Linkola fansite