1,407 words
From:
Pentti Linkola
Can Life Prevail? A Radical Approach to the Environmental Crisis
Trans. Eetu Rautio and Olli S.
London: Arktos, 2009
On September 11, hijacked passenger planes destroyed some of the tall buildings of the World Trade Center in New York and a corner of the main military headquarters in Washington. This incident had little impact on mankind as such, yet the reactions it elicited in the world were huge. Overfed Western countries, choking on their wasteful consumption, experienced the same shock, panic and chaos that had struck the United States. Because of these reactions, the attack became genuinely significant. Still, overstatements like “the world has lost its course” and “the world will never be the same again” are nothing but rubbish.
Hysteria has even spread to Finland: articles were written that oozed with bloody fury, a flood of flowers was showered upon the US embassy, and emergency aid was offered even by the government. One commentator recalled the list of US states recently drawn by the perceptive Hannu Taanila, the last ones being Alaska, Kuwait, and Finland.
Never before have foreign casualties elicited such great sympathy, never before has so much attention been paid to the suffering of families. And still, judging merely by the number of victims, this incident amounted to little more than a brawl if compared to other events in the recent history of mankind. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died in the bombings of Dresden and Hamburg, masses of people also in London, not to mention the loss of life in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In Leningrad a million civilians died of bombings, artillery fire and hunger. Or to consider even more recent episodes, where are the mourning flags for Grozny, Baghdad, and Kosovo?
That confused nation cannot count the full number of casualties in New York–after all, we never even got to know who they voted for as president in the last election. However, from what I have gathered, only a couple of thousand people died.
Those who died in the attack were not simply humans: they were Americans; and not ordinary Americans, either, but the priests and priestesses of the supreme God of this age: the Dollar. The passengers of the domestic flights are not a valid sample of humanity either, but a wealthy, busy, environmentally damaging and world-devouring portion of mankind.
The force and pull of money and power, which is apparent everywhere, including the way in which governments fawn upon the United States to prove their friendship, is almost incomprehensible. It took days before something other than human evilness and the hatred of madmen was suggested by our media as a possible cause for the incident–and this explanation is still the favored one.
As a matter of fact, the United States is the most colossally aggressive empire in world history: the number of US military bases around the world is simply bewildering. Through its bases, the US spreads its economic and cultural influence by profaning, subjugating and silencing others. On all continents it finances and arms the governments and guerrilla movements it favors, frequently switching sides. The US employs death squads to do away with dissidents, and personally wages war when needed. Every now and then, as a reminder, the US bombs old proud Iraq. The US is the most wretchedly villainous state of all times. Anyone aware of global issues can easily imagine how vast the hatred for the United States–a corrupted, swollen, paralyzing and suffocating political entity–must be across the Third World–and among the thinking minority of the West too.
On these grounds, it may be assumed that Third World activists are behind the bombings in New York and Washington. These people are waging a desperate battle for their fatherland and faith against an overpowering, gigantic enemy–not unlike Finns during the Winter War. Regardless of how alien their religion or culture may be, they certainly deserve all our sympathy. Opposition within the United States is also strong. The case of the Unabomber springs to mind here: his planned, thoughtful model for an alternative society was presented to the Finnish public with a translation of his manifesto. Domestic opposition in the US, however, will hardly have the energy and ability to carry out an operation such as the one we have witnessed in New York: the skill, competence, and courage behind the attack has stunned even Western military experts (who, nevertheless, publicly voiced their condemnation of the action). In the US, search for the ‘culprits’ has now turned into a farce. The blockhead who, following obscure procedures, was appointed president called the kamikaze pilots “cowards” in his first statement. He later claimed that the matter is no longer about terror, but war: a war between the US, with its 250 million citizens, and a private individual, an admittedly noble-featured and clearly determined Sheikh from the Middle East, who must “be caught either dead or alive”. This individual hired a large group of madmen to commit expensive atrocities (this being the only point of view that Bush understands).
The workings of the small Finnish state are also verging on farce as, following on from that, an emergency status has been declared on the border. From small beginnings great things may develop. I am reminded of how, after an attack by the German Red Army Faction, large police forces were mobilised in Lapland to search for a young German citizen. It was later revealed that it was only a student gone hiking.
With regard to our own country, there is one further point I would like to make: it would be desirable at least for those people who idolise our Winter War to stop being sanctimonious about violence in general.
One should also bear in mind that the difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is a matter of perspective: it all depends on the observer and the verdict of history. One clear example springs to mind: that of the Finnish soldiers who took a violent stand against a legitimate government. These soldiers received their military training in foreign countries, exactly like the Palestinian guerrilla group that made its attack at the Munich Olympics or the Reds in Italy and Germany. For all we know, they were trained in Southern Yemen or Lebanon. Some of these infantrymen were madcap adventurers, others fanatical patriots. Had our own civil war ended differently, they would readily have been labelled as terrorists.
Still, the oppressive measures taken by the US against other cultures and populations are not the worst of catastrophes. The most serious aspect of US supremacy is the leading position this country has acquired as the cradle and engine of global economic growth. Unbounded economic growth rapes nature, exploiting the natural resources of land, ocean and sky. What now remain are the Father, Son and Holy Ghost–or, rather, the Dollar, Economic Growth and Market Economy. Two Gods clashed against each other in New York: Allah and the Dollar. The servants of Allah sacrificed their own lives and the lives of a few disciples of The Dollar. The aim of the servants of the market economy is to murder the whole of Creation and mankind as soon as they can. The deep ecologist and protector of life, the guardian of the continuity of life, would certainly choose Allah when things get tough.
Given the situation, the towers of the World Trade Center was the best target among all the buildings of the world, both symbolically and concretely. It was a magnificent, splendid choice.
No matter how great the joy that followed this bull’s eye, certain questions were raised soon enough: what will the long-term effects ofthe attack be? Although human mass deaths are always a positive occurrence in the light of the population explosion, a few thousand lives are nothing–even if quality were to make up for quantity. In other respects, the incident seems to be having truly significant repercussions at the moment. Economic growth seems to be plummeting–at least to some extent. Air traffic, the worst kind of traffic is decreasing. Foreign trade seems to be slowing down. Destructive tourism and international cooperation seem to be growing more difficult. Surveillance and police actions are always an impediment to raging business life. All incidents of this sort give nature extra time”
The bitter tenets of life have always proven optimism to be unfounded. Will it be justified on this occasion?
Elonkehii. [The Biosphere], September 26, 2001
18 comments
It boggles my mind that an article such as this one could have been published in this otherwise excellent site. I expected an article similar to “Nuking Mecca”…
It is easy for moral idiots like the author of this article to dismiss the lives of abstract others with a wave of the hand. Let us make this personal, however. The younger brother of a good friend died at the World Trade Center. He grew up in my hometown outside of New York City, several years behind me in school. He was a stand-up guy, like so many of the others who died on 9/11. Anyone who says that he (and they) deserved it, who praises and sympathizes with their murderers, is beneath contempt.
The editor of a web site which posts a piece such as this one without comment should be deeply ashamed of himself. That someone who purports to be an identitarian of any sort can contemplate the murder of so many of his own people by the likes of the 9/11 hijackers with anything other than rage and a thirst for vengance is simply impossible for me to understand.
Go read National Review or something.
Sure, and you get back to your Ward Churchhill
Pentti Linkola is not a moral idiot. He simply rejects the idea that every human life is absolutely valuable, on the grounds that “human rights are a death sentence for nature.”
I am certainly not ashamed of myself for publishing “Bull’s Eye” nine long years after the event. Americans desperately need to get some perspective on 9/11. We need to get beyond self-pity and victimhood and understand how they make us dupes and tools of Jews and moral obscenities in the eyes of the rest of the world. Until that happens, Americans will suffer from collective “moral idiocy.” If Pentti Linkola contributes even a bit to changing that, then he deserves our thanks and admiration.
I fully agree with Greg’s perspective on this. As one of the people who was involved in publishing this book, I can say that our motive in making it available in English has been to offer a nature-centered rather than a nationalist perspective on the contemporary world (not because all of us in ITP/Arktos necessarily agree with everything Linkola writes but because we see it as having value). But I definitely agree with Greg that essays like this should help to put the supposed “war on terror” into perspective.
Americans have an absurd tendency to overvalue themselves. They are quick to extol their own virtues but are always baffled whenever anyone questions the absolute superiority of any aspect of American civilization. One of the most ridiculous outcomes of such thinking is the fact that the deaths of hundreds or even thousands of people in other countries, including Europeans, is often treated casually by us, but if a single American dies as a result of political violence it is seen as the epitome of tragedy and the entire world is expected to hang its collective head in shame and sadness at the loss. This is not limited to the mainstream. Those of a revolutionary Rightist perspective have laundry lists of problems with America and its culture, and rightfully so, but often they still tend to behave as if the U.S. and all of its citizens and institutions are sacred. The two views are contradictory. A revolutionary Rightist should not have trouble understanding the anger which the radical Islamists feel towards America, even if we disagree with their methods and their ideology.
The real question is, what are we (as revolutionary conservatives or New Right or whatever) trying to save? Is it the U.S. and the West as it currently exists? Or are we just as alienated in our own lands as the Islamists are from the postmodern West? Personally, I see the system which the World Trade Center represented as being a much greater threat to the genuine West than Osama bin Laden. The system which the World Trade Center represented is not genuinely Western – therefore, I don’t see why we should have to feel sadness at its destruction.
While there are any number of things to take issue with in Greg and John Morgan’s responses, I’ll limit myself to 2.
Ideologues of all sorts – left and right – love the “people” in the abstract, but when it comes to the real people – the ones who actually exist – all too often these talkers show that, in fact, they feel little more than contempt or at best indifference toward them. For all their words, their sentiments reflect a profound alienation and rootlessness.
It’s clear that, when considering the New York City cops and firefighters, the office workers and – yes – the upper middle class white suburbanites who died by the thousands on 9/11, John M. and Greg are thinking “Them”. To me, however, it is a matter of “Us.” It is their fundamental lack of solidarity which causes Greg and John M. to treat us to abstract, bloodless lectures of the “chickens coming home to roost” variety. On the other hand, it is my fundamental sense of identity that leaves me, 9 years later, still outraged at the murder of my brethren.
For whites to be and to survive as a people, we must have an ethnic loyalty and solidarity that insists that “an injury to one is an injury to all.” This is obviously a sentiment, however, which John M and Greg do not share.
As for the obvious implication that the 9/11 dead “had it coming” in some sense due to their country’s arrogance and mistreatent of the rest of the world – this is a noxious argument and a variation on one of the main justifications used by our enemies for every act of anti-white discrimination and violence. Given this logic, I would expect any day to see an article on this site, for example, providing a similar justification for the war of murderous ethnic cleansing waged by bands of black thugs against those Afrikaaner farmers who no doubt also “deserve” death for the past acts of the apartheid regime (not to mention for what Mr. Linkola would almost certainly consider their “anti-nature” practices).
(1) It is appropriate and inevitable for a person who is aware that the vast majority of his race are hell-bent on collective suicide to think of them as “them”–as the unenlightened, as opposed to those few who are awake.
But it is just impudence on your part to assert that this is akin to dehumanizing “them,” which is just a short step from claiming that they all deserve to die. The truth is, I only care about them because they are my kin. I want “them” to wake up, so that “we” can survive.
Yes, “we” were attacked on 9/11. But that is just a small part of the picture. The big picture is that we were attacked a long time ago, when our country and our racial destiny were wrested from us by Jews and their collaborators, and 9/11 is just an entirely predictable consequence of that much greater attack. Our race could sustain a 9/11 every month and survive. But our very existence is threatened by the big attack, which is ongoing and accelerating.
I am sure I was not alone in hoping that this small attack would awaken Americans to the much bigger attack that made it possible. Many were awakened. And if 9/11 ultimately helps our race to regain control of its destiny, to have a future again, then those people will not have died in vain.
You apparently want to look at the small picture and pretend that it is virtuous because it is somehow more “concrete.” Conservatives love to laud the concrete, since it spares them the hard work and discomfiting implications of objectivity and critical thinking. But I see no virtue in myopia and sentimentalism, particularly because they have been so handily manipulated by the true and ultimate enemy to rally the public around them.
(2) It is not an “obvious implication that the 9/11 dead ‘had it coming’ . . .” Those planes and buildings were not packed with neocons, congressmen, journalists, and lobbyists. There are innocent victims in every war.
This essay by Pentti Linkola might be regarded as a good example of what Guillaume Faye calls “obsessive and hysterical anti-Americanism” in Le coup d’état mondial. While there are some points on which I can agree with Linkola, his essay does not represent the kind of anti-Americanism that we need. I would like to see a rational anti-Americanism–i.e. a rational critique of the American way of life–and a rational American nationalism developed at this website and elsewhere. (A more general critique of Occidental civilisation, such as formulated by thinkers such as Jean Thiriart, Guillaume Faye, and Alexandre Zinoviev, should also be developed.)
I use the term “rational American nationalism” with several important reservations and qualifications, which I will explain word by word:
1. American nationalism should be rational in relation to “great politics” rather than “petty politics.” It should be realistic, constructive, and creative. It should not be rational in the sense of being rationalistic or scientific. It will need to contain a large irrational or mythic element because its partisans need a heroic and voluntaristic ethic. The “radical negations” and “sovereign affirmations” (Donoso Cortés) that White Americans must assert if they are to survive as a people are today seen as “impossible” and “unthinkable.” But realism does not mean blinding oneself to the dismal realities of the present or in accepting them as inevitable and inescapable. Our realism should be that of the brave, the strong, the industrious, and the creative–the realism of those who create reality–rather than that of the servile, the weak, the lazy, and the uncreative–the realism of those who endure reality. We belong to a race of thinkers, fighters, and workers. We do not belong to a race of slaves!
(As an aside, I will remark that race realism is to racial nationalism what agnosticism is to religion. Just as agnosticism does not create churches or inspire crusades, race realism cannot create parties or inspire political movements. To avoid any misunderstandings, I will say that I have no quarrel with race realism, that I would like the findings of race realism to be more widely known, and that I would like race realist scholars and scientists to be free to conduct their work of research and education. I merely think that White nationalists should put race realism in its proper place in relation to their own work: race realism may inform racial nationalism, but it cannot inspire it.)
2. American nationalism should be American in a “counter-hegemonic” sense. American nationalists must redefine what it means to be an American. This is a difficult and complex issue, and here I will do little more than note several issues raised by Julius Evola and Francis Parker Yockey. (Arthur Moeller van den Bruck’s conception of “conservative revolution” is also relevant.) Evola raised several issues concerning the “choice of traditions” at the start of chapter 8 of Men Among the Ruins:
“In the case of every historical nation it is not always possible to speak of ‘tradition’ in the singular, if this term is understood according to the most current meaning, and not according to the higher meaning that I have previously discussed. In almost every instance, the processes that have unfolded within a nation in the course of centuries have a complex character, and are influenced by multiple factors and trends that sometimes have been harmonious and at other times have clashed and neutralized one another. What was a predominant force at a certain time may have shifted later into a latent form, and vice versa; only an obsolete ‘historicism’ can be so presumptuous to reduce everything to a linear development. And just as historicism is characterized by the passive acceptance of the status quo, which it sanctions with the myth of an ‘ideal necessity of history’ or with similar formulas, likewise it regards a nation as a temporal unit that does not allow revisions. On the contrary, a more open-minded outlook is able to recognize multiple and at times even contrasting possibilities in the history of a nation, possibilities that in some way reflect just as many ‘traditions.’ Such an outlook realizes the specific importance such an acknowledgment has from a practical point of view, as what is required is a choice of traditions, especially at turning points and in times of crisis (when it is necessary to react, command, and organize on the basis of a central idea the forces of a people who are wavering and falling apart). It is necessary to choose the ideas in one’s past that are perceived as more congenial by the men who, at such times, are entrusted to begin a new cycle.
“When these considerations are applied to Italy, we are confronted with a difficult problem, since multiple factors hinder the exercise of discrimination and choice. The greatest impediment lies in the existence of a ‘patriotic’ historiography that, due to its partisan spirit, suggestions, and catchphrases, precludes the objective comprehension of many aspects of the past, and is often responsible for serious distortions. After all, the character of history that has generally been ‘fabricated’ (and there is no other word for it) in the last century is not altogether different. Overall, such a history is nothing but the alibi that revolutionary liberalism, democracy, and the thinkers of Freemasonry and the Enlightenment have created for their own benefit; these movements were later followed by the interpretations proper to Marxist ‘historical materialism’ and its ‘revolutionary progressivism.’
“Because of this situation, the choice of traditions in view of a true reconstruction is particularly difficult, since measures have already been taken to preclude the acknowledgment of certain values, to falsify the real meaning of some fundamental historical upheavals, and to ensure that only the direction chosen by the authors and popularizers of such historiography will prevail. This tactic is very apparent, especially in the case of Italy: to historically endow everything with a national character that in the past had a subversive and anti-traditional tendency so that, after establishing some taboos, people will scream ‘sacrilege’ and mobilize a passionate ‘patriotic’ reaction as soon as any other interpretation is put forth.”
What Evola wrote of Italy is also true of America: American nationalists will need to judiciously choose and establish traditions in times “when it is necessary to react, command, and organize on the basis of a central idea the forces of a people who are wavering and falling apart.” These traditions will be radically opposed to those associated with America at present. As Yockey wrote over sixty years ago in Imperium:
“It is a tribute to the political skill of the leaders of Jewry that they were able in the 20th century to identify their Jewish Idea with America, and to label the nationalism of America with the term ‘un-American.’ ”
American nationalism should be both “anti-American” (in relation to the Jewish America) and “pro-American” (in relation to the White America). This is why it is possible to write of anti-Americanism and American nationalism interchangeably in this context.
The re-creation of White America requires the destruction of the Jewish America by revolutionary means. The White America of the past cannot be restored by means of Christianity, the Constitution, conservatism, capitalism, or elections.
The America of American nationalists should not be that of the past, or of the present, but of the future. This may well require the formation of a “historical party” (Jean Thiriart) that can create a nation.
This brings me to my third point.
3. American nationalism should be nationalist in the sense that it seeks to create a new state and a new nation. American nationalism is not simply White racialism, anti-Semitism, or anti-liberalism. It is all of these things and more. But it will never be anything without political power. American nationalists must think and act in political terms. However, most Americans who may be counted “on our side” do not do this. As Yockey wrote:
“American nationalism has no connection with a grand tradition of life, thought, and action. It finds itself charged with a politically revolutionary mission, but the American people is not revolutionary. Its reaction to a Cultural disease is in a crude racial form. It faces a mighty political task, but is unconscious of the necessities of power-thinking.”
Such apoliticism is fatal. As Carl Schmitt wrote: “If a people no longer possesses the energy or the will to maintain itself in the sphere of politics, the latter will not thereby vanish from the world. Only a weak people will disappear.”
I am willing to bet, none of the critics of this article have read anything by Linkola. As it also seems that John S has not watched 911 Missing Links.
The work of Chalmers Johnson may be better than that of Pentti Linkola for putting the events of 9/11 into perspective. Johnson’s Blowback, The Sorrows of Empire, Nemesis, and Dismantling the Empire are all very informative concerning American imperialism. Linkola’s ideas and perspectives are too radical and too unorthodox to be comprehensible and acceptable to most readers.
Hey, John S, Do you think “us” when you read about what the white kwans did to Germany in ww2? And should the Germans just forget about the destruction of their country by the idiot American’s ? Just get over ? Like the typical American says after destroying countries that actually have a culture. You probably only think “us” when you see another white american watching some negro play basketball. White Americans have been a curse on whites outside America since the enlightenment.
@John Morgan
As one of the people who was involved in publishing this book, I can say that our motive in making it available in English has been to offer a nature-centered rather than a nationalist perspective on the contemporary world (not because all of us in ITP/Arktos necessarily agree with everything Linkola writes but because we see it as having value).
I think you and the others should be commended for your intellectual honesty and integrity. I imagine it would have been very easy to downplay or remove Linkola’s worst ideas by playing games with the translation and editing.
Although human mass deaths are always a positive occurrence in the light of the population explosion ….
Vile, sickening, depraved and grotesque, a true abomination, obscenity and sick freak this man is.
Note his qualifier. Mass human deaths are ALWAYS a positive occurrence. Not occasionally, sometimes, or even often but always.
So what the hell is his complaint about Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Mass deaths are always supposed to a be good thing.
He is also a hypocritical man who unlike Ted K. does not practice what he preaches no doubt because he lacks the courage to do so which makes him even more disgusting.
Reminiscient of Savitri Devi who clearly stated on many occasions that there were far too many humans – most of them ugly and worthless. She felt it to be the height of hubris, foolishness and arrogance to pretend that any such human was the equal of a Bengali Tiger or ancient Redwood. Her argument seemed to be twofold: one purely supply and demand – the fact there were far too many people and far too few Tigers. And the second, that the humans had degenerated to an extreme degree. The two come together in the premise that a Higher Humanity would not only be beautiful, but wise enough not to overpopulate and corrupt the environment. Thus the return to a balance between Man and Nature effected.
challenging doctrine whoever it comes from, but not one without its merits. Obviously as WN’s we hope to see the other guy do more of the dying off – and consider ourselves the Seed of a Higher Humanity or at least one of two or three.
Lew: thanks. We never shy away from radicalism in Arktos, whether we agree or not.
“The deep ecologist and protector of life, the guardian of the continuity of life, would certainly choose Allah when things get tough.”
Not so sure about that. Arabs and Muslims are too poor to screw things up. That’s one of the virtues of the vast majority of humanity remaining poor.
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