"Can Life Prevail?" was a refreshing read for me after having to suffer through Dugin and De Benoist, even if there was a lot to disagree with Pentti Linkola on. Environmentalism and ecology focused reads are always fun for me because those topics interest me in general, but they do have real relevance to National Socialist community organization and economics as well. So, despite this work not being to heavy on political theory, I do think it was a worthwhile read.
One of Linkola's ideas that really struck a chord with me was his argument against "food hygene"; the surface level presentation of the agreement, though is one I disagree with. There is no need to expose the stomach to botulinum toxin or mold when many of the examples he gives of utilizing "unhygenic" food have much simpler, utilitarian minded work arounds. A home-canned jar of jam could simply be sterilized with boiling water before sealing to avoid the growth of mold (I know from experience. I've eaten home-canned good that were over 10 years old with no issue simply because they were prepared the right way), and moldy bread or spoiled food could be used for compost, a treat for chickens, or slop for pigs. Add to this that may contaminants in crops, like ergot in rye, will unavoidably kill people or make their fingers rot off, and we see how this point is really just a innocent, yet misguided grasp at a return to tradition. There are much safer ways to expose kids to germs and potential allergens early on. I could go on about the historic importance of cleanliness and bathing in Aryan cultures, but I digress.
The important part of "food hygiene" is that excessive legislation around cleanliness standards kills local industry and workers' and consumers' connection to their land. Linkola gives an example gathered from his time as a fisherman. Post World War II, the finnish government cracked down of transport hygiene more and more until most independent fishermen were priced out of the business, Linkola included. The same governmental practices can be seen in America. Take, for example, the modern American beef industry. 60 years ago, cattle were raised by a small farm would be taken to local slaughterhouse, where the cattle would be slaughtered without hassle and then quickly distributed to local markets. Now, farmers have pay to have them shipped to one of the 4 to 6 locations in the continuous United States that the American government authorizes processing to take place in ([spoiler] https://web.archive.org/web/20230413100551/https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2022/02/14/more-than-money-monopoly-and-meat-processing [/spoiler]). Not only does this make cattle raising much harder for small farms, who live at the total mercy of a processing monopoly, but it also disconnects the agriculture industry from the area that surrounds it. This practice of industrial farming, and many more like it such as focusing on exportation, are completely at odds with a National Socialist way of living. For a people to be proud of themselves and live sustainably, they must be connected to the land they live on and be proud of what they do. I don't believe this is possible with the level of oversight that Linkola has criticized.
The "food hygene" discussion as well as Linkola's somewhat joking mention of "fennotarianism", which he defined as the practice of only eating foods produced within one's own country, has reminded me of a concept I was introduced to while I was reading about Gottfried Feder. Feder promoted the idea of the "Garden City", wherein a community of roughly 30,000 to 50,000 people would consist of a small, planned, urban center a a large greenbelt of agricultural land surrounding it and would be, for the most part, self sufficient. Feder was criticized for the idea by most of his contemporaries, probably because it was ahead of its time. A community like this would allow its citizens to properly connect with the land they lived on, because a large part of their food and products would be coming from the local area. I understand this idea isn't necessarily a part of the text, but I feel that it ties in with it nicely and is disserving of mention, especially if we cover Feder in the future.
Linkola says, at one point in the text, that any action carried out for the benefit of man will inevitably harm nature. I see several problems with this. One is that is fact is being presented as something people should feel guilty about. Any living creature lives at the expense of another. Life is struggle and we are alive. It is natural, so there should be no guilt in responsibly using the natural world. The second is that it is only our ZOG societies and overdeveloped non-white societies that live in a way that harms nature as a whole. Modern industrial farming practices, clear-cutting, and excessive use of plastics surely harm nature as a whole, but these are far from our only options. New permaculture and agroforestry techniques in development present a promising picture of a future where agriculture in integrated with natural processes, and would contributes to ecosystem heath rather than harm it. The fact of the matter is that the white man, like every other living creature, possesses the same right as every other organism: to fight for a future, or die. The only difference is the scale and context we apply this right within. It is also pretty evident that if the Nordic White world were to immediately replace all of are industrial techniques with pre-industral ones, nations like China would take advantage of this and wreak heavier and more wide spread damage on the natural world than we ever could while also neglecting imperiled species, the vast majority of which are monitored and preserve by white people.
In comparison to Devi, Linkola has a much better understanding of how conservation is actually achieved, despite his faults. He acknowledges the issues that come with what I would call "partial conservation". Devi had a sweet spot for pets, but Linkola avoids this. He is decisive enough to recognize that having resident outdoor cat populations is unsustainable, and that population culling has a real place in conservation, especially with species that have become vermin like racoons (that fact still makes me upset because I like them). Linkola also recognizes that every animal has value within a macro-scale view of nature and that there can be no favoring of predator over prey and vise versa in real conservation efforts. His biggest failing with the realm of conservation thought is probably his blind worship of certain parts of academic consensus. He harps on climate change far to much for my liking, while neglecting much more important environmental concerts like water contamination and poorly planned damming (I need to make a long form post here at some point on how FDR purposedly harmed white farming communities through the TVA and reservoir projects. Interesting stuff), although he does mention water issues briefly. He threw out wild claims like that 500,000 multicellular species are going extinct a year, which, at a total of 8.9 million species globally, would mean that all life on planet earth should have gone extinct between that essay's publication and now.
Despite my qualms with Linkola, I do want to reiterate that this was a good read. I would like to do more eco-fascist stuff in the future, if we can find more. We might have to be done with Linkola, though, since "Can Life Prevail" is the only text of his that is widely available in english.
>Do we really need bananas in the middle of winter? Do we really need to waste so much shipping fruits in from all over the world year-round? Probably not. As Linkola points out, taking these things away would be wildly unpopular with the masses