Pentti Linkola
Kaarlo Pentti Linkola (7 December 1932 – 5 April 2020) was a Finnish radical deep ecologist, ornithologist, polemicist, naturalist, writer, and fisherman. He wrote widely about his ideas and in Finland was a prominent thinker. He lived a simple and austere life.
Linkola blamed humans for the continuous degradation of the environment. He promoted rapid population decline to combat the problems commonly attributed to overpopulation and was quoted as saying about a future world war, "If there were a button I could press, I would sacrifice myself without hesitating, if it meant millions of people would die."
Linkola's writings describe in emotional detail the environmental degradation he witnessed. He dedicated his 1979 Toisinajattelijan päiväkirjasta (From the Diary of a Dissident) to German far-left militants Andreas Baader and Ulrike Marie Meinhof, stating that "they are the signposts, not Jesus of Nazareth or Albert Schweitzer". He supported acts of terrorism such as the 2004 Madrid train bombings as he viewed them as disruptions to a society that is responsible for the degradation of the Earth. When asked in 2007 why he had not himself become a terrorist, Linkola said that he lacked the ability and bravery.
“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.”
“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, paralysing and suffocating political entity - must be across the Third World - and among the thinking minority of the West too.”
“The coming years will prove increasingly cynical and cruel. People will definitely not slip into oblivion while hugging each other. The final stages in the life of humanity will be marked by the monstrous war of all against all: the amount of suffering will be maximal.”
“I believe that human brilliance manifests itself only in flashes, among rare individuals. For this reason, humanity as a whole is enormously destructive: the creation of something as devastating as Western culture, which is now allowed to spread throughout the world, offers sufficient proof of this fact.”
“...the chief cause for the impending collapse of the world - the cause sufficient in and by itself - is the enormous growth of the human population: the human flood. The worst enemy of life is too much life: the excess of human life.”
“I could never find two people who are perfectly equal: one will always be more valuable than the other. And many people, as a matter of fact, simply have no value.”