Mullvad has two owners, founders, and CEOs - Daniel Berntsson, and me, Fredrik Strömberg. All posts I've seen yesterday and today, including the newspaper articles, talk about Mullvad as if Daniel is the single owner, founder and CEO. It should be obvious that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission.
If you have any questions, comments or concerns you're welcome to comment on this thread, or email our customer support.
See below for the response you'll get from support:
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Mullvad is a political company. We fight for freedom of speech, freedom of information and the right to privacy. These are firmly held values of the founders of Mullvad.
Mullvad protects the right for people to express things we don't agree with. We protect the right of everyone to access views we don't agree with.
We also live these values by being tolerant in our daily work. Everyone is welcome to collaborate with Mullvad if they share these narrow core values. As employees, contractors, customers, suppliers, lobbyists, campaign partners or whatever it might be. No matter what their other opinions are and no matter whether the founders or anyone else in Mullvad dislike them. The founders themselves fundamentally disagree on several important issues.
This is what allows us to advance our common causes. Being in a tolerant and intellectually open environment is also liberating and promotes truth seeking.
The more people do this, the better a place the world will be.
It should be obvious that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission, in the same way that someone's opinions on animal rights, taxes or public healthcare policy isn't.
That said, if you no longer want to be a Mullvad customer for philosophical reasons, we think it's important to honor that. In that case, reach out to support.
People in this thread are slowly (or maybe not so slowly) realising "… this was also a business after all… just with a different "model"… huh". There's caring, there's caring PR, and then there's caring theatre.
It's a HN thing, not down to the commenter. Sometimes threads are reactivated if the mods think a low profile discussion is worth a second chance or boost. The submission time doesn't always reflect the original submission. Sometimes it's due to a comment move or thread merge.
I’m a long time Mullvad customer, likely paid Mullvad upward of 400€ in the past number of years, as well as recommended it to friends and family members.
What you seem to be missing in your comment, is that some of that money I paid, found its way to support an organisation that has extreme racist views.
I’ve reached out to support and requested a refund of my outstanding credit.
Not just “support”, it’s literally the main source of funds for the party. >70% of donations. If it was a small donation that would be sort of controversial but maybe defendable, but here we are talking about funding pretty much the whole party
> is that some of that money I paid, found its way to support an organisation that has extreme racist views.
Geez, I hope you do not pay give any money to Google, Microsoft and such. They have many employees and I am sure some of them donate to causes you would disagree with using (part of) the money you gave to those companies.
And, I have to wonder, do you vet your local bakery as well on how they use their money?
So have I and I'm using lots of OSS by people and groups that I'm politically, ethically, morally and whatever else-ly incompatible with and yet they build great stuff for free without restricting me and my use of it. If my revenue allows for it I'll gladly donate to all of them for their work (that is also running my side gig and homelab) without looking into their spending OT donation habits.
I'll happily keep on listening to radical left punk, RAC/rock against Communism as well as anti fascist and NS Black Metal as long as the music moves me.
I can't go around judging all day. Wherever I spend money, I'll probably disagree with 99% of what the people at the receiving end will do with it.
This isn't an all or nothing approach. People can exercise the options they have without being a puritanical crazy about it. This isn't a strong argument. You can protest about how society is structured while still taking part it in.
For example, I certainly boycott anything to do with Elon Musk, for the same kinds of reasons.
You seem to be falling into the "perfect is the enemy of the good" trap. It's not possibly to perfectly boycott every person and organization that deserves to be sanctioned, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it where it is possible.
So if Kim Jong Un ran your local bakery, you'd still buy his cakes? Or what's your point? That we need to be 100% flawless or else there is no point in doing anything at all?
You’re telling me you wouldn’t go to the Kim Jong Un bakery? I bet it would be delicious.
Anyway, yes, I do judge you if you publicly and loudly declaim small to medium sized businesses that work really hard for your privacy while handing out money to megacorps who are directly involved in tightening the global surveillance net.
I did the same, except I'm paying for Mullvad through the Tailscale partnership, so I reached out to them and expressed my desire for them to partner with other privacy focused VPN providers like Njalla, Airvpn and others. I don't feel great about my money funding ethno-fascists in my country.
Hello Fredrik! As a heavy user of Mullvad in the past, easily spending hundreds of euros over the years, I was reserving my judgement to see what the official statement on this would be. Thank you, now I have my answer.
> It should be obvious that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission.
It should be obvious that what people are concerned is their money being used to support these political causes, whether it was done in a way that keeps the company out of it or not is besides the point. Daniel, of course, is free to choose what to do with his money. I am, too, and based on this I will be making a choice to not spend any more money on Mullvad subscriptions. Nothing personal, and it's a shame because I have nothing but praise for the technical side of it. So long, and thanks for all the fish.
> That said, if you no longer want to be a Mullvad customer for philosophical reasons, we think it's important to honor that. In that case, reach out to support.
What a dismissive way to treat your customer. Basically the equivalent of someone on the American right saying “if you don’t like it you can get the hell out”, which tracks given Mullvad’s party of choice.
Edit: Downvote me all you want but it doesn’t change the fact that ethnic cleansing is wrong and by definition counter to free speech and human rights in general.
It’s called voting with your wallet. People in America do this, and are told to do this, all the time.
What would you like them to do? Roll over on the co-CEO and throw him under the bus, signaling to everyone that there is a “correct” point of view to have that Mullvad as a company is going to push and promote?
Individuals should be allowed to think and do what they want as an individual, as long as it isn’t compromising the company. The fact that they have 2 CEOs with differing political views seems like a healthy thing.
Freedom of speech is a political view that shouldn’t be tied to any one party.
Their co-founder (not just an employee) is bankrolling a party that’s leader has called for the expelling of all immigrants. This fact is not in dispute.
"We have worked extremely hard to ensure that your internet browsing cannot be retrieved by the police, even with a warrant, and that you can be anonymous online" is not at all "politically neutral"
Like, I agree with and support their politics, but that doesn't make something politically neutral.
An honest question: Would you like to live in a world where company/employer exerts more control over the views that are publicly expressed?
Do you actually want voting to happen via wallet?
This whole view kinda confounds me. I don't see how you can honestly profess to be on the tolerant/right side, morally, while trying to boycott someones business over his political views. Would you have preferred early feminists or LGBT advocates to be hounded in their professional life? Would it have been better for more people to do that?
If you want to vote for or against Örebropartiet, then just do it at the booth.
Plenty of people here basically seem to indirectly advocate for company based censorship and some kind of budget-plutocracy, and no matter how "morally correct" your views are, that is under no circumstances a worthwhile endeavor.
This is about what customers are comfortable supporting. This guy doesn't just have what many consider to be unpalatable political beliefs, he's one of the biggest funders of what many consider to be an unpalatable political party. Lots of people don't want to give money to something which they feel will in part be funneled to an organization which is antithetical to their views. Realistically, I kind of doubt Mullvad is rolling in swimming pools filled with cash getting syphoned to neonazis, but that brings me to my next point...
For many, it's not just an intellectual position but an emotional one. This doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong, but you probably won't be able to reason them out of it. It's the same reason I don't listen to Michael Jackson. He's dead and none of that streaming revenue would go to him or to raping children but...yuck.
At the end of the day, there's an irony in this guy supporting the very freedoms on the internet which are being used to disseminate criticisms against him, and perhaps inducing people to starve one of the vehicles which helps maintain those freedoms.
I have to say, this is a disappointing message. The thing about intolerant movements is that tolerance doesn't fix them, it makes them worse and lets them accumulate power until they can destroy the tolerant.
I'd recommend reading Karl Popper and his Paradox of Tolerance, which he formulated after seeing this exact thing play out in his native Austria with the rise of the Nazis.
>> Being in a tolerant and intellectually open environment ...
Karl Popper said, "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
>> the same way that someone's opinions on animal rights, taxes or public healthcare ...
We're not talking about reasonable people disagreeing about tax policy, we're talking about free expression, the entire purpose of Mullvad.
When you make a large donation to a political party whose most fundamental policy is restricting the free expression of people, that is wholly incompatible with everything Mullvad says they stand for.
When a founder and executive with influence over Mullvad policy and operations is exposed actively and financially support restricting free expression of people, it's not "tolerant" to pretend that's somehow compatible with the mission and brand of the company.
I don’t support remigration, but calling immigration “the free expression of people” is a stretch. It’s orthogonal.
You can argue that remigration isn’t protecting the privacy of those who are surveilled by the government or deported to repressive countries that surveil their population. But Mullvad’s product protects even those people (it must, because it hides the identity of who’s using it from itself).
Örebropartiet policies directly target and restrict the religious, educational, and cultural expression of people who legally reside in Sweden.
Their polices focus on the way people dress, the languages they speak in public, the institutions and schools they build, the traditions they practice.
People would be forced to self-censor their speech, their beliefs, and their behavior.
I'm always wary of people bringing up the paradox of tolerance; most of the time, it's just used as an excuse to justify censorship while claiming to be opposed to it. "When you censor me, you're being intolerant and that's wrong; when I censor you, I'm doing it in the name of tolerance, so I'm correct".
I'm not Swedish, so it's possible there's something that I am missing. But skimming the wikipedia page for the party (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party#), I don't see anything that says the party is pro censorship.
If you want to boycott companies for the views of founders or employees (basically incentivizing corporate censorship), then you are the intolerant one from a Popper point of view.
>"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
does that fight against "intolerant" also include fighting people from other culture that are systematically and religiously opposed against your current society and its tolerance and will undermine it within the next couple decades by reproducing more? nvm im aware asking for self awareness is too much.
Is it? They appear to be some sort of hardcore pseudo libertarians with some nationalistic vibes. To an extent that seems to overlap with Mullvad’s declared value?
So far as I can tell, the main source of this claim is the comment you are responding to, and similar.
I think the real issue is this: "The party is heavily opposed to political corruption and high politician incomes and wants to reduce the wages of politicians and senior officials." (from Wikipedia, among other sources.)
> If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
yeah i'm sick and tired of hearing this, because it gets applied very asymmetrically.
we routinely tolerate certain kinds of intolerants and silence other, and that sucks.
people happily tolerate lgbt-intollerant people, afraid of being called islamophobic and/or intollerant, and but we do not tollerate at all people that have been calling that risk out for years.
so yeah, popper's writings are being grossly misused, and i'm sick and tired of seeing that come out in every discussion on these topics.
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Also: if only mullvad is taking that kind of political stance (no-log vpn etc)... maybe you should think twice about who is actually on your side.
I don't see him saying he doesn't want people to look into that. What I see is an explanation for why he thinks the company is better for having a multitude of views and opinions on their staff, a correction of some lazy reporting in the media and stated tolerance for people who no longer want to use said company's products for perceived value incompatibility (which he also seems to disagree with though).
> This is what allows us to advance our common causes. Being in a tolerant and intellectually open environment is also liberating and promotes truth seeking.
Nope, that is what will get you taken over by the assholes. Reasonable defense is necessary in reality. There ARE bad actors, they must be kept out.
I'm pretty familiar with these right-wingers that claim to fight for "freedom of speech" they all end up fighting for "freedom of speech for the things I want to say, jail for those who oppose me." The 2024-2025 swing was pretty extreme on that front.
Political extremists are all the same, left or right, nobody should be surprised because they seek power above all else.
I had been pretty concerned about the level of advertising for Mullvad I've seen recently, that's usually a really bad sign for a VPN type company. But seeing this comment, in combination with the news article linked here, tells me everything I need to know for trust.
VPNs are all about trust. Mullvad has completely broken all trust with me.
If you still wonder why there are sudden attacks on Mullvad, I "heard" there are Chinese (in addition to the others; dual- / triple- vendoring is key) LLM-based tools to check for swarm origins and campaigns.
Slightly tangential on Swedish society, there are similarities between USA and Sweden. There's a large segment of society that is white and very blond, and there's a largish segment which is not. Along that same line there are all kinds of divisions: economic, education, religious, sets of values, and of access to things and possibilities. What pisses me off is that the cast of "CEOs of successful companies" live in an sphere of privilege where they really are not bothered at all by the brown people. They in fact have plenty of places to go, a vast archipelago, out of reach for anybody who can't afford a boat. Though they get all the benefits, including cheap qualified labor from people who had to leave their homelands displaced by poverty, conflict and war. I'll switch VPN provider too.
One of these days we will elect somebody who is corrupt and morally corrupt, incompetent and poorly educated and who'll promise to screw us over many times and in many positions, and we will let him just do so so that there are concentration camps for the brown people.
Remember calling cards 20 years ago? Spooks used to run many of those for mass surveillance on the cheap. In the same vein, VPN companies are perfect for creepy spooks so I've always been weary of them.
Now this massive media attack campaign finally convinced me Mullvad must be uncompromised. At least from Five Eyes.
I bet VPN services owned by the spook-corporate complex would be 100% politically correct, have squeaky clean PR/comms/ads, and have support from media (at least no hit pieces).
There have been multiple posts about this and hundreds of comments, so there is clearly appetite to discuss it, although none of the submitted links have been particularly detailed.
I'm going to merge the other threads into this one, which is why you'll see some anachronistic timestamps.
"Mullvad AB and its parent company Amagicom AB are 100% owned by founders [1 person] and Daniel Berntsson [...]"[0]
So I'll assume he owns about 50%. Well, that ends my usage of Mullvad.[1] I appreciate that probably many of Mullvad's employees have different views, and obviously Berntsson has every right to his opinions and to express them, and I also appreciate that someone can have control over an opinionated company and run it for one particular set of reasons but not for other causes that someone believes in, but in the end I just don't want my money supporting anti-people causes.
The point is, they want to round up lawful citizens and turf them out of the country because they have the audacity to be slightly foreign, or worse born to someone foreign.
that is the issue, not how much tax/spend big/little government.
Exactly, the problem is not left/right it's the authoritarianism, which is again a huge threat to the world after being held mostly in check in Western democracies for many years.
People tend to forget about the "Last Man" part of Fukuyama's "The End of History and the Last Man", but we are definitely in the phase of the Last Man seeking conflict and fighting against our hard-won freedoms.
I don't see how, given their answers to simple questions as described in the "2026 run up to the elections" section, this party could ever be considered a leftist party.
They are far too small to have any chance of influencing education. The simpler explanation would be that there is a strong nationalist current. Think "our people are the best, let's make them even better and throw out the others"
Why wouldn't educated people be swept up by populism? They're human like the rest of us. Maybe you should stop thinking that having an education makes you a moral person, it just means you have an education.
Horseshoe theory, rather than being as described,is actually caused by far right parties being more willing to label themselves as left. E.g. national socialists.
To add to the context. The founder of the was the chairman for the youth organization of Vänsterpartiet (English name: The left party), the furthest left party in the Swedish parliament, and he recruited members primarily from the same organization when he was kicked out. The reason he got kicked out was that he was seen praising the Revolutionary Front, a far-left extremist political and militant network in Sweden.
It should be added that the area where they are active is in the local government of Örebro Municipality, a place with a total population of 160,143 people. Looking at the political leanings of parties for a small local government with the lens of national parties might not give a very clear picture. Their strategy is also directed toward local voters, not national voters, through a strategy called the 12% line.
It doesn't seem that complicated to be honest with you.
That is how they self identify but none of their policies seem particularly left wing.
At least not from that Wikipedia page.
Extremely left wing dental care is the best I will give them.
You could, just as long as you keep it at that. The term actually does describe a valid political ideology: socialism combined with nationalism instead of the more common socialism combined with globalism, i.e. internationalist socialism ('workers of the world, unite' etc.). The association with Nazism makes it close to impossible to use the term in a 'neutral' way but in itself it just describes a nationalist movement which espouses socialist ideas.
> Extremely left wing dental care is the best I will give them.
Free dental care is considered "extemely left wing" now? That's just bizarre tbh.
If a country would decide to use tax money to provide health care services for free to everybody that's not much different than using tax money to maintain an infrastructure network that's free to use (like roads), or free police and firefighting services - and I think none of those examples are considered particularly 'left-wing'.
That's typical for extremist parties, AKA Horseshoe theory. IRL Erdogan's party went so far to the right that they started actually adopting very socialist/communist policies. The party names is AKP which stands for "justice and development party" but many people are calling it "Allahs Communist Party" since in Turkish communist is written with K and they are islamists doing communist stuff.
I'm Swedish, but never heard of Örebropartiet before. I tried looking into their website and it doesn't say a lot.
Translated from Swedish wikipedia:
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Örebropartiet was founded by Markus Allard in the spring of 2014, when he was recently expelled from the Left Party and the Young Left.
[...]
Among the party's main issues are reduced politicians' salaries, reduced bureaucracy, civil servant responsibility, assimilation policy and the repatriation of people who do not adapt.
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I think it is very reasonable to demand that people try to integrate when coming to a new country - learn the language, get into the culture. As a Swedish person I think this is missing from our integration politics, which is an often talked about topic in the last years.
In the end this is a political question and sadly instead of engaging in dialogue the reaction to these questions feels like it most often leads to polarization and division. Inclusion means also including people with different beliefs and respecting their opinions, even if we don't share them. Through understanding comes empathy.
Fun fact: we get a dopamine release when taking an opposing stance and then seeing (subjective) proof of our stance. It requires self-discipline and fighting your impulses to avoid polarization.
I don't think it's reasonable to "demand" integration. What should happen is that the existing cultures should be open and welcoming enough so that new-comers want to take part. Also, I like the idea of immigrants bringing their culture with them (and in some cases, that may be the last representation of that culture) and welcoming people to learn about it.
Multi-culturalism should be about championing different cultures and not forcing everyone into a cultural homogeneity.
I appreciate the candid response. It shouldn't be so hard for people to just clearly state the premises that motivate their beliefs.
>the burden should always be on the ones who are stronger to accommodate those who are weaker.
Is this a universal principle? Does this come with any limits at all? A salient example that comes up often: classrooms tend to have a small handful of extremely disruptive students that ruin the experience for everyone else. The current thinking is to not suspend/expel these kids because they are disadvantaged or whatever. But in doing so the other kids suffer greatly, not to mention the teachers.
How do you manage different dimensions of strength/advantage? It is the weakest in society (women, children) that bear a disproportionate burden of allowing large amounts of immigration from third-world countries. Why are the rights of women and children secondary to the rights of immigrants?
There are > 190 countries in the world and many of them require immigrants to meet at least the same criteria for employment and assistance as born citizens.
GP literally addresses your points. I think we’re very welcoming in most of Europe, adopt others’ traditions, and are not too imposing. Just, you know, leave women alone and don’t aim fireworks at ambulances.
Dismissing any amount of integration is chicanery. We’re pro-social creatures, and knowing the lay of the land makes your life better.
compared to the rest of the world europe is absolutely not welcoming. heck, even as a native german if you move from one region in germany to another you are treated as an unwelcome outsider. less so in big cities where you are more anonymous but still. if you are lucky you can find "your tribe" and your children may be accepted if they grow up there. the only places in germany where i ever felt welcome was linux user groups, and other fringe groups which as a whole had more of an outsider status.
> Just, you know, leave women alone and don’t aim fireworks at ambulances.
Where I'm from (Northern Ireland) harassing women and attacking emergency services have been part of the culture for as long as I remember. Would you suggest that people arriving should actively take part in these behaviours?
I remember a discussion I had with a English teacher from UK who immigrated to Sweden during the 1990s. They said that in UK, when a government employee would visit a house regarding dept or some other problem, they would bring a large police escort and then they and the neighbourhood would had a big brawl that generally ended with the police winning and then most of the participants would go to the pub. It was just how things worked. The guy were majorly surprised that in Sweden, the government employee could just knock on the door and talk to the person with no police and no brawl.
I would assume that if attacking emergency services is the norm in Northern Ireland, so is police escorts of emergency services. That is not the norm in Sweden, through it has become the norm for certain regions where emergency services no longer feel safe going on an emergency call. The downside is that if the police is delayed, so is the emergency service, and naturally the quality of emergency service is reduce in those locations which some people say is a form of discrimination.
That’s… a tough one. Bit of a loaded question. I would say “don’t engage in anti-social behaviour regardless of the cultural milieu”, I’m sure NI has much better traditions to partake in?
But then we're getting a bit deeper into the issue. These are things that need to be considered if you want to mandate "integration" surely.
We now want people to integrate but we also recognise that there's a higher moral code which should supersede local customs. Is that correct? Then it seems like integration isn't the actual aim, but the shaping of people into a sort of ideal which is actually removed from local cultures.
We're also onto picking and choosing between the "better" and worse local traditions. But who is the arbitrator for which traditions are good and which are bad?
What if the purpose of integration is merely to bring people closer to the local average, ironing out the outlier kinks and helping them feel secure in society?
I did a bit of the integration course by choice, even though it’s not mandatory as a EU national. I found it fine, a bit boring because we grew up with most of these customs. The Flemish ‘traditions’ were all new to me, and I also realise I don’t follow them; but respect some if I’m invited to people’s houses.
I think we’ve made a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to integration. It’s neither super forced and awful nor useless.
Northern Ireland is definitely atypical. An English friend of mine moved over there a few years ago as his wife is from there and her family all live in the same area. I can't imagine him being considered as "integrated" for at least a few decades.
(My experience with Irish/Northern Irish people is that they're very friendly and welcoming, but I've only been there a couple of times).
I'm not saying that people shouldn't want to integrate, I'm saying that "demanding" it is problematic. Imagine grandparents being brought over from a different country and they don't speak the language - should they be forced to attend language school? What level of language ability would be considered the minimum and does that also include reading/writing?
By all means provide encouragement and resources so that people can adapt to their new situation, but don't demand it.
Yeah, I know. That’s why I say that no one is ever happy with where you set the limit. I think demanding A2 in language is reasonable, for example. Yes, demanding, even if it’s in a reasonably long timespan. We demand much more out of everyone born in the country, don’t we?
It’s a hot topic, but in Belgium some people are taught how to take the bus, do their taxes, and not harass women. One of my Dutch teachers led the integration course and said this stuff was really difficult to land.
If you come from a culture of groping women, not doing is gonna be a challenge. I get it. But we’ve also built mosques and have pagan festivals and allow public servants to wear their choice of religious attire. I think it’s a balance, but nobody is ever happy with wherever you set the balance.
When I learn the local language, I’m happier; it’s nice to talk to people. Not everyone agrees.
I’ve read a few books about dopamine/motivation/common neurotransmitters and this has never come up. In my amateurish view I think empathy is more connected to oxytocin (which afaik does release during social connections, which The book ”The molecule of more” covers a bit).
And for anyone who treats Atlas Shrugged as a Bible, I hope you're aware that Alan Greenspan was almost surely more of a true believer than you are, and his legacy is pretty well summarized by having to admit that his practically religious belief in Randian ideology led to the most severe global economic downturn since the Great Depression.
Of course after his admission modern Objectivists began to predictably denounce Greenspan (Ayn Rand's favorite boy) with various "No True Scotsman" arguments.
Örebropartiet is like the weirdest party in Sweden. It's named after "Örebro", a Swedish city with 125k population. The party's founder, Markus Allard, used to be far left politician before turning far right.
Their party program is all over the place. They stand for free dental care, direct democracy and deporting immigrants.
Marcus is also known for profanity and foul language in council meetings.
An oddity in Swedish politics is that if a local party manages to get 12% of the votes in a constituency they are eligible for getting a seat in parliament, and can skip the regular 4% popular vote rule.
Örebropartiet actually has a chance to get into national government next election (Fall 2026) since their local support is quite strong. Times are weird
Let's think of the other extreme as well: exactly the same excellent VPN service, is run by an almost-the-best-person-in-the-world who has just one small quirk that makes them not 100% perfect for you (they pat kittens not as often as you'd like them to do). Obviously there is a border between your extreme and mine, which border defines "use" and "no use" cases for you. And now: wherever this border is - should it be the same for everyone?
Just like everything else in life, different people have different borders and that's fine.
I don't understand the point of this thought experiment. Are you trying to disqualify the idea of boundaries because they're imperfect (which is a very flawed argument) or are you going somewhere else I can't figure out at all?
We can easier look at conclusion people make about banks and stock options. Will people invest money into index fonds and pension fonds if those fonds invest money into companies that produce and sell weapons to abhorred brutal dictators? What about buying stocks from telecommunication producers who operate in abhorred brutal dictatorships and who helps those dictators to control their population?
Because normal people don’t want to deal with the headaches. Your choices are weird people or intelligence cutouts. (Or abandoning any attempt at privacy in an attempt to be ideologically pure.) Sorry, but those are the options.
Because there are almost no normal people. Everybody's a jerk in private, to somebody, sometime. Everybody's got opinions that half the population doesn't like.
Why doesn’t Apple just make a built in iOS native vpn that can be toggled (effectively) from the swipe down menu control and is paid monthly or part of iCloud
I try to turn it other way in my head, like if Mullvad got to know somehow political views of some of their customers and say "We don't like what you say, so we decide to end our business with you. We don't want our infra to be used to spread opinions like yours."
You’re not taking it far enough. What if Mullvad has someone you disagree with as a customer, and does nothing about it. Does this mean that Mullvad is supporting them? Does this mean that you have to stop supporting Mullvad? What about Mullvad’s landlord? The company that provides them their electricity? Their internet provider? Their internet provider’s internet provider? Should you boycott the entire internet because Mullvad has not been given the BGP death penalty?
They could do it, some people would align with that stance, and some wouldn't. Exactly how it plays out being a customer: now we've discovered he supports a far-right party here in Sweden, I can choose to not support the CEO with my money and let others know about their political leaning to decide by themselves if they want to support him and his business aware that their money might got to far-right parties.
I don't see any issue with your flipped argument, it's the same thing, no?
I imagine that if a company really denied a customer due to disagreement on some views there would be similar flood of comments like "my views is my problem, I pay you money you must do business with me". Maybe I'm wrong though
Companies can absolutely refuse a customer and many do. Companies will often have public rules about not doing business with weapons manufacturers or tobacco producers.
They also can refuse business due to political stance. They can even give different prices to different customers.
There's an enormous imbalance between company and customer that you're ignoring, not to mention the difference between a private person and a company's very public personas who own said business.
If a company was sniffing around to learn my political views, that would be a bit intrusive, wouldn't it? I wouldn't expect the same level of anonymity if I were the CEO of a company like Mullvad. There's also a disparity between "I'm taking my business elsewhere, good luck without my $10 a month!" (or whatever Mullvad costs...) and "we've decided to not allow you to use this service".
How large a disparity is depends a lot on whether a company has a lock on a market. Generally, if a vendor in a crowded market decided to turn away customers who are XYZ voters (as an example) I'd be more apt to just comment on that as a business strategy than as a "how dare they, they must accept all customers!" Like, if you are one of 20 VPN providers and you think you can be successful by turning away customers.. well, OK. Good luck with that.
If it's a provider with a monopoly that's a bit different. I live in an area with only one choice of provider for electricity. So I don't think they should be allowed to refuse service to anybody who is paying their bill, even people I vehemently disagree with.
If the far-right parties they're supporting are similar to MAGA in the U.S., what they're doing is taking customer money and funneling it into a political effort to do just what you're describing - just in a different way. "We don't like groups X, Y, and Z, so we're going to fund a political effort to take their rights away by using government."
As I understand it, the Örebro party pushes for deporting immigrants and has a "Sweden belongs to the Swedes" policy that includes deportation for even those born in Sweden if their parents were born in, e.g., Somalia. So basically, "we don't like certain people, so we want to use customer money to force them out of our country". That really doesn't paint Mullvad as the victim, here.
>> Mullvad is a political company fighting for free speech, free information and privacy, with two equal co-founders, co-owners and co-CEOs who fundamentally disagree on many issues. Daniel's donation to a political party is private and not part of Mullvad's mission. We protect the right to express and access views we disagree with. We welcome anyone sharing these core values, whatever their other opinions. We are happy to refund others who don't, where we can.
To be fair... I'm not sure how you could take any other position as a privacy-first VPN. By technical nature, you have to believe pretty hard in 'people's business is their own business and not mine.'
I'd rather have a founder who believes whatever, but supports others rights to disagree vehemently, than one who agrees with what I believe but is less flexible on allowing others choice.
A right to say something is not the same as the right to say (and do) something without being called out on it.
He has the right to do what he’s doing. Other people have the right to react and say “That sucks, it’s against my values, I no longer trust you or want to do business with you.”
Okay - but that doesn't mean I'm not going to weigh up what you say when I'm choosing a business to support; especially if it's not in a professional context.
We need to add something to this nice rule about using services that are good from people we don't (fully) agree with.
I'm not personally inclined to be so strict about this, but there are people with objections against the Proton CEO who once agreed with Trump on twitter, or DHH (there is this one blogpost about his extreme views). Etc.
This sounds very much far right and not left at all to me
> Markus Allard takes inspiration from marxist ideology[32] and unites the "productive" classes of society against the "Transferiat", with the "Transferiat" being a term coined by Allard to describe the classes of society that lives off of transfers that are a net negative for society such as those who, despite having an ability to work, live off of social welfare benefits, as well as those who work "made-up services"[33] that the party deems serve no societal function, such as bureaucrats, consultants, public sector communications specialists, strategists and HR-specialists.
It's practically a copy and paste of the ideology behind "doge".
"The technocracy movement proposed replacing partisan politicians and business people with scientists and engineers who had the technical expertise to manage the economy"
Whoa whoa whoa. I don't think it's at all fair trying to throw Technocracy under the bus. The guilt by association doesn't look great! But Technocracy was interesting. It had some hopes & values, and it wanted people thinking and working materially, scientifically, having a perception of the world better than just money. It had some real neat idea. Wild & absurd? Yes that too. But I don't enjoy the casual drive by shoot down!
This is just a rephrasing of the lumpenproletariat, coupled with the professional-managerial class. You could also refer to the latter as a modern version of the lumpenbourgeoisie (although this term is applied rather broadly). It sounds more like pro-labor, pro-work, anti-lumpen Marxism. In no way “right-wing” unless you want to call North Korea “right-wing”, which is a very ultra-left thing to do (what orthodox Marxists call left deviationism).
You would be wrong. The people you described were called "тунеядцы" in USSR. With a possible exception of bureaucrats who existed as a result of centralized government but were also called "a barrier for the working class" by Lenin etc.
I also highly doubt USSR would accommodate people who move in and don't bother to integrate into the culture and speak Russian. Ask people from entire countries where Moscow did Russification, and those people didn't even move in from outside they already lived there.
They had strong opinions of what was deemed "socially useful" work and were not above abolishing those pursuits they deemed to be useless.
All able-bodied people were expected to work (in approved roles) and you would be provided a job if you couldn't find one but if you refused to work they would deem you a "social parasite" and prosecute you if you didn't reform your behavior.
Somehow, people seem to forget that Marxism is an ideology of workers.
>Somehow, people seem to forget that Marxism is an ideology of workers.
Not really, Marx and company were nobles, lawyers, etc. The ideology concerns provoking a civil war and taking over, workers rights is just the rhetoric to cause the revolution. The worker’s paradise never materializes because it’s not actually about that.
This is true but the ideology was packaged and sold as a movement for the working class. My observation had more to do with the modern interpretation of it as somehow being a license to not work, which appears comical when compared with how it was instituted.
Not all of the component parts of the ideology are necessarily false due to their introduction and popularization by Marx. Personally, I find his writings obtuse and his beliefs abhorrent. There is, however, merit in the idea that the state should benefit its people, a large percentage of which are the productive working class, but it shouldn't be ruled by the working class. The state is its people and their culture, it shouldn't oppose their interests or subjugate and exploit them for the advancement of ideals alien to them.
This is actually very far left, just not the current wealthy-urban-lgbtq far left. USSR marxists and Maoists held the same views, where the individual's main function was to work and refusal to work or low productivity required either reformation (aka often, Gulag) or hunger.
"Those how do not work, do not eat" - Mao
Interestingly, psychoanalysis in the USSR was aimed at helping the patient to go back to work, for instance.
> Marxism, communism and socialism are all extreme far-left ideologies.
Yes, but the behavior in that quote, cutting social services, is none of the above. Using language associated with far left movements while promoting far right policies leaves you as a far right party.
> Being anti-immigration doesn't automatically swing the party to the right
Literally nothing in the quote I quoted is about immigration (though they hit that checkbox as well and it absolutely does swing you to the right).
In the U.S., before Trump was elected, immigration control and deportating illegal immigrants were things that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama ("left" politicians) campaigned on.
I think this is more nuanced than this article or mullvad themselves present it as. What you give to mullvad as a form of payment will end up in the pockets of the funding members which allows them to make relatively large political donations, but it's also not as deep as presented. What gets seemingly glossed over how involved large companies are in pushing parties like orebro into relevancy.
As a basic example, youtube started pushing a LOT of anti-immigrant videos. I never watched them since after few minutes it's obvious that it is clear ragebait, but I keep getting them recommended without showing any interest in them and they're all clocking in anywhere from 300k to millions of views.
There is virtually no way to resist the temptation of being anti-immigrant/racist/whatnot when you see abusive behavior exploiting the good will of the european union especially when there is state level abuse to extract additional funding from the shared support pool. This being extremely unpopular gives motivation to keep all of this under wraps as much as possible which only fuels the fire when "information" is made available on social media platforms where you benefit from blowing this out of proportion and then if you try to question it you are labeled which naturally breeds resentment.
The wikipedia article about the party is pretty interesting [1]. "The party has also been described as both right-wing populist and left-wing populist as well as left-conservative"
The party was founded after the founder was thrown out of the Left party for liking a far-left extremist group on Facebook and not backing down from that. Since then the party has evolved to also include goals traditionally attributed to the right, like large scale remigration and a stricter immigration policy.
The party also seems inconsequentially small, even at the municipal and regional level. They have 0 seats at the national level
Nothing, it's just an empty platitude that can be used for justifying any kind of abhorrent act against "others".
It's why it's so effective as a rallying cry, it means nothing substantial, can be molded into whatever the speaker wants it to mean, it's an empty vessel for the bearer's hatred.
Welp, that vanishes my support for mullvad, despite I did recommended it to many of my friends who doesn’t want/can setup their own.
Im not against people having different political opinions, I personally agree with things from each side and disagree with them both too on other matters, plus having my own third option that doesn’t fit any side. But I am certainly against a company marketing itself as a “defender of personal and human rights and freedom”, yet they are sponsoring a party that obviously doesn’t hold these values, this company will report individuals in the future to deport them maybe, 5 years later they are reporting others for disagreeing with whatever agenda that party is having, it’s always a slippery slope, never think it will end at xyz and that will it.
Goddammit it’s like companies are ALWAYS destined to turn to evil one way or another, it’s just how long it will take is the question. It’s a reminder that you should always host your own, trust nobody, none.
They got 43.9% in what Wikipedia marks as "semi-free yet questionable election". Also more correct question IMHO would be "was the NSDAP extreme in 1933?" and the answer is probably "no as much as by today's standards".
What you're actually asking is whether people knew they were extreme. But this makes your overall point circular: we can't say a party is extreme if the majority of people don't call it screens.
They were definitely extreme by the standards of the time. Their aim was explicitly to completely revolutionise European politics, culture, religion.... everything. One comment I heard recent (on The Rest is History podcast, I think Tom Holland said it) they were the most radical movement in European history.
Their ideology implied at the very least getting rid of whole populations. They wanted to reset to an imagined ancient culture and rewrote history to justify it. Mostly imagined, anyway - Sparta was the one real example they looked to.
They were extreme by the standards of the time, but the Overton window at the time did go further to the extremes, so they were considered less extreme than they would be today.
Aren't far-right parties opposed to government control and censorship? Ideally a provider should be politically neutral, but I'm wondering if it's preferable to have one that is opposed to government control and censorship.
For some people, the answer is obviously yes. For others, they'll judge Mullvad purely by its track record, audits, and technical design.
Honestly, you could say the same about the CEO of ANDURIL in the US - the Oculus guy...but he just cares about the US and wants to make money by making weapon systems etc.
Is he a bad person? Is he a patriot? Who knows, I ain't gonna play the ultimate judge game - but he did release a cool gameboy clone which is literally the closest I will ever get to his work... [1]
Look at Zuck and Musk. Their platforms are still used by millions. It's only "us" that care about the pedigree of our tech founders, most people couldn't care less.
I’d say entirely incorrect. It means exactly the opposite. I don’t buy the “it’s popular usage now so that makes it right” argument - it’s like saying 4 now equals 5 because more people use 4 to mean 5.
There has to be some reason that so many projects are started by right wing people. Something in their personality that makes them both RW and willing to start lots of projects.
Right wing thought patterns tend toward believing in oneself; predicating the worth of the individual on their objective behavior or output; valuing individual achievements; and also believing that effort is likely to result in those achievements.
Left wing thought patterns are biased toward less agency, e.g. the individual is a product of the system; systemic discrimination holds people back; one's trauma or neurodivergency is a valid anchor that makes achievements very difficult; failing to achieve is okay and doesn't reduce one's intrinsic value.
I'm aware that left wing patterns position individuals as moulded by systems but I'm not aware of any that explicitly deny the power of the individual to try weird stuff, especially in a low-barrier-to-entry industry like software. I guess maybe the overall level of that is somewhat lower and maybe low enough that it doesn't really happen?
In some ways I would say it could even increase trust: if the guy is a privacy absolutist, ultra-libertarian, "my business is not the state's business" type, his VPN products are likely to be pretty good.
On the other hand, he might have other strong right-wing views that users don't agree with, and which might take precedence in one's set of priorities. If I like football and they like football, but they also want to kill me because of <other reason>, I don't think I'd want to give them my money.
Such a convenient time frame with all think-of-the-children bs wave to point fingers at the one of the best VPN services our there with spotless reputation and raise a hysteria with duplicated stream of posts, isn't it?
I am surprised that people are surprised, all these services are by people for people who are marginalized. Therefore, they are either far-right or far-left. When its business, its more likely to be a far-right since they are more business-oriented. The far left folks usually make a repo and give it away or try to organize some collective effort.
> for people who are marginalized. Therefore, they are either far-right or far-left.
There are many types of marginalised groups, and many other reasons to want to use VPNs. Putting everything on a left-right political axis seems more than a tad reductive.
Sure but far left and far right is a crude default way to generalize, the left folks will be especially annoyed by this but its still useful when the specifics don't matter.
The party in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party. Doesn't sound extremist far-right to me. Many of its positions would be considered center-left or even far left in much of the world.
Up/Down (authoritarian/libertarian) is what matters there.
If he has high allegiance to the extant power structure then promises should be questioned.
If he is for radical decentralization and antiwar then I'm more likely to trust promises made about privacy and autonomy.
Then there's international confusion about left/right. Scandinavia is known as a good place to run a business because businesses regulation is much lighter than places like the US which are heavily regulated. In the US business regulation is "left wing" in Scandinavia it's "right wing".
We'd use a 14-dimensional vector for political positioning if we wanted to be studious but most folks are just looking for a friend/enemy distinction. Even many of the comments here looking to dump a well-regarded service if either "tastes great" or "less filling" is confirmed. The false dialectic as means of control and all that jazz.
When it is about paying money for a commercial service I think it is valid point to vote with your wallet. Otherwise if it was a free service, it would not really matter as the whole VPN provider industry is dubious and comes down to the same tech stack and outcome.
Parties get goverment funding based on election result, with a minimum floor of 2.5% votes in national elections. This party is way too small for that, and is primarily focused on local election.
I use Mullvad because it physically prevents anyone from logging my data.
What a co-owner does with his personal money in a local Swedish municipal election has zero impact on the code protecting my traffic.
Did a quick research - calling a party that campaigns for a 30-hour work week and socialist dental care 'far-right' just because they have a strict immigration policy shows how carelessly people throw labels around these days.
Oh yes, sure, the party started by avowed Marxist Markus Allard is 'far-right'. For those who can read (or know how to translate) Swedish here's an article [1] on marxist.se - well-known hidey hole for far-right extremists - on how the expulsion of Markus Allard from the communist party (they call themselves 'the left party' but they're one of several communist parties in Sweden) is an 'attack on the left'.
Allard is a traditional leftie, someone who thinks in terms of class struggle and power to the people. He also happens to be rather outspoken about the failure of Swedish parties on all sides to handle the problems related to the excessive migration Sweden and Europe have been dealing with for the last few decades. This has put a target on his back for the everyone-I-don't-agree-with-is-Hitler crowd so his party is of course 'far-right'. Well, if that is what 'far-right' means it doesn't seem all that problematic so I wonder why people always complain so much about the claimed rise of the 'far-right'. See what that leads to, you obsessive labellers of those who dare to question the desired narrative? When everything is far-right the term has lost its meaning just as claims of 'racism' or '*-phobia' have lost theirs.
Swede here. That's not even close to accurate. Örebropartiet is not extremist, but I would absolutely label them radical populist left-economic-leaning nationalists. Please do some research and make up your own mind. They're a tiny local party active in Örebro municipality where their founder and leader loudly points out clearly wasteful use of government funds, or more or less corrupt decisions made by leading party figures in other parties on local matters. The party leader is known for ridiculing competing parties party members on debates.
Where the Örebropartiet (Örebro Party) usually are called extremist is in questions regarding immigration. They are of the opinion that people that move to Sweden should not integrate but also assimilate, and quickly, find a job. For some people, this might sound extreme, but I would argue that more than half of the Swedish population (and its parties) nowadays share this view, similar to how Japanese people and society broadly want people that move their to assimilate.
> similar to how Japanese people and society broadly want people that move their to assimilate
And it's super racist there too, I can assure you. My father in law is Korean but lived in Japan his whole life. There's no way to describe what he experienced except racism. People just hated him for being Korean.
I have no respect for people that concern troll about some vague cultural purity to disguise their prejudices.
A friend of mine who is a non Japanese Asian lived in Japan and when asked said there's no racism. There's mild cases but if you are careful to follow the customs and speak the language, you are generally accepted as a Japanese in daily life.
No, there's a fundamental difference between what we both wrote. There's a difference between saying "I know someone who has experienced racism" and "My friend says there's no racism in X country." One is a personal experience, the other invalidates the experiences of everyone else. They are not two sides of the same coin like you are implying. If you take the phrase "There is no racism in Japan" at face value, you are either pushing an agenda or falling for someone else's.
"We just want assimilation" is the palatable marketing term for "We would be fine arresting people at their immigration hearings if they are brown enough." Just look at the U.S.
Rewrite my comment to say "my friend experienced no racism". Not more than in his home country at least.
What you said is the same. One is according to what your relative said another is according to what my friend said.
I don't think it's crazy to expect assimilation. We are fascinated with different countries and cultures and we generally consider it's a good idea they exist and are different. Diversity is strength. But they can only be different if they have their own culture and traditions. Would everyone be so fascinated with Japan or Korea if it was not for their culture? Would they be the same without high trust society that is made possible by it?
> I don't think it's crazy to expect assimilation.
What's that mean to you? In my city, immigrants work, run businesses, pay taxes, have kids and send them to local schools, ride the bus, complain about the weather, practice their religion. I guess the only thing they don't do is complain as loudly about the government as (many of) the rest of us. What more could they be doing to assimilate?
Probably nothing. Looks good to me, they speak your language, have jobs (don't abuse welfare), pay taxes, live legally. Reading about the party it seemed that they want to kick out people far from what you described (which can be still wrong, idk, but I'm not sure it's so outrageous I would boycott a business over its owner's preference). If they campaign to kick out people who are like what you described then I would think harder.
No, it's a reasonable question. Language is how 90% of communication happens. 如果我用中文說話，你根本聽不懂我在說什麼。只有聽得懂鄰居和社區裡的人在說什麼，我才會感到自在；如果聽不懂，我就不會有這種自在感。I've a significant chunk of my life in places where people don't speak my language and it's not a comfortable situation to be. Sure I have some anxieties but everyone does and if you say their feelings are invalid then I'm not sure which of us is more intolerant.
What qualifies as assimilation is completely up to the reader. To some people, it means holding a job (although I don't know of any white people that get deported for being laid off). For some, it means not committing crimes.
For many, it doesn't matter if you have a job or if you're even born here. There is no standard of assimilation you can meet if you are ethnically different enough. That is why, again, the U.S. is currently arresting people at their immigration hearings. This is what far right politicians really want, they don't give a fuck about assimilation.
> Would everyone be so fascinated with Japan or Korea if it was not for that culture and high trust society made possible by it
Buddy, come on. Most people I know are not fascinated by Japan, they are fascinated by a romanticized idea of Japan that has been filtered through Reddit posts and Anime. They cultivate a one-dimensional understanding of the country specifically so they can daydream about it. A lot of Americans that "love" Japan would lose all interest the second they were told they can't dump their trash outside.
> Most people I know are not fascinated by Japan, they are fascinated by a romanticized idea of Japan that has been filtered through Reddit posts and Anime
Somehow people I know who rave about Japan just don't watch anime that I know of. They just go there and like how everything is. The anime nerds I know don't talk about real Japan much.
If you don't have that fascination, fine. I was fascinated by tons of things there. I think most people were. And most people would say it's a horrible idea destroying that culture.
You are completely dodging the topic of assimilation. You are implying that Japan is great because it's culturally homogeneous, and the reason it's culturally homogeneous is because people assimilate, and therefore Sweden deporting teenagers is morally right because they are protecting their own culture from people that don't assimilate.
You have no specifics on how immigrants don't assimilate, and what part of the culture is worth preserving, or how you can even assimilate to a culture that is constantly developing. If I am ethnically Japanese and grow up in Japan, but I don't act like others, that is not a "lack of assimilation." That is me actively participating in a shift of the culture, and that's how everyone would see it. But if I were a different ethnicity in the same situation, I would be a problem immigrant anchor baby who is trying to destroy the culture of the country. Do you see the difference?
This idea that culture is able to be frozen in time and preserved is paradoxical. It's a cudgel used to bludgeon disadvantaged people who are perfectly functioning citizens, and even harm people who could make the country better, not worse. How do you expect immigrants to introduce new ideas to a culture if you elect politicians that will demonize and deport them if they are not sufficiently "assimilated"
> You have no specifics on how immigrants don't assimilate,
I haven't been to Sweden. I take the word of people who have been there or live there elsewhere in this thread.
But elsewhere I definitely have seen communities of immigrants which don't speak local language and treat local population as less than themselves because they are of different religion.
> If I am ethnically Japanese and grow up in Japan, but I don't act like others
Racism is one of those things that unfortunately crosses political and social boundaries. Some groups just hide it better than others by enforcing anti-racism as a group norm.
Racism definitely crosses all boundaries, but deporting people on the grounds they are not culturally aligned is what we'd call a positionally right policy. That does not mean left wing parties can't do it. It means it lies right on the political spectrum.
That's not a subjective opinion I made, that is just a textbook definition of what we consider authoritative right. Left and right mean things, and they don't mean what traditionally progressive or conservative parties happen to be doing at that time.
Left and right refers to where the Girondins and the Montagnards/Jacobins sat in the French revolutionary assembly. We’ve bastardized this into imaginary delineations of political positioning and for some reason we keep bolting on arbitrary positions as Girondin or Jacobin.
I don’t care what textbook you are looking at, I’m looking at (or maybe writing) a different one. Left and right do not actually “mean things” if you intend for “meaning” to be universally or even widely agreed upon. I suppose for you “meaning” may only be relevant if a certain group or class agrees upon the meaning, but the rest of us will continue to say and believe what we want!
You are being needlessly contradictory, in a pointlessly academic way. I can assure you nobody thinks of left or right as the French revolutionary assembly, any more than we think of "Wednesday" as the day of the Norse god Odin, or "a sandwich" as the Earl of Sandwich's gambling snack. The Etymological origin doesn't determine current meaning.
> but the rest of us will continue to say and believe what we want
Who is we? These definitions are mostly settled, and where they aren't, there are fuzzy differences, not huge gaps of disagreement. It's a shared language of understanding where people lie on a quadrant of politics. It's socially useful to have that language when posing political theory. Again, this does not mean political parties are permanently stuck to their quadrant. What do you think Republicans mean when they call themselves right wing? Nothing?
> I suppose for you “meaning” may only be relevant if a certain group or class agrees upon the meaning
What? You seem to be stuck on an idea that I am making some kind of partisan statement by saying a certain policy is left or right wing. That is not a value statement on whether it's good or bad. I don't know why you are so heated about this.
There is no shared language anymore, and I’m tired of pretending that there is. The 20th century notion of left and right, which was itself a fantasy, has been turned into a tool of propaganda. It does nothing but muddy the waters.
“Right-wing” politicians are arguing for nationalization in some cases and wielding industrial policy like they’re FDR. We may see price controls and even capital controls before long. The oil market interventions alone would make Stalin blush. Meanwhile they are jumping on regulation in other places, such as AI “safety”, and have floated hate speech bans (to combat antisemitism).
“Left-wing” pols (admittedly in the face of immense hate from their base) are coming out for free market solutions gently guided by the government and deregulation so we can build faster. Outside the US, you have bizarro world Labour policies in the UK (they seem to be aiming to absorb the Tories), China’s roaring Communist economy that’s the global hotbed of economic activity, etc.
The traditional categories still seem to hold in Latin America, for some reason. But that’s it.
What exactly does the left-right distraction provide except for an easily abused method for enforcing a (tenuous, completely malleable) group orthodoxy? These days it seems like people just use it as shorthand for “enemy”. Any heterodox position is automatically of the other wing, preventing adaptation to real-world circumstances. Some positions (like a land value tax) are somehow both left and right wing depending on who you ask. It’s infuriating.
You are taking me to say left means Democrat and right means Conservative, and acting like it's a gotcha when they criss cross. I already said all of this was possible.
> “Right-wing” politicians are arguing for nationalization in some cases and wielding industrial policy like they’re FDR
Nationalization is a policy lying on the left. State ownership of industry is the textbook left pole
> The oil market interventions alone would make Stalin blush
Price controls on markets are authoritarian left
> are coming out for free market solutions gently guided by the government and deregulation so we can build faster
Economic right, mildly libertarian
> What exactly does the left-right distraction provide except for an easily abused method for enforcing a (tenuous, completely malleable) group orthodoxy?
No, they provide categorization to resist group orthodoxy. People are going to categorize, that is human nature. Without these, the only way to categorize a policy is what the parties happen to be doing at the time. That causes a group orthodoxy. There are people describing themselves as "more left" or "more right" as a shorthand to reject group orthodoxy. There are people describing a policy as left or right, regardless of which party is doing it. You're not sparing anything by resisting policy categorization, you are making things less specific and more likely to default to broad buckets.
That doesn't mean you can't talk about the policies in specifics, it means they lie on a very flexible and descriptive map.
That isn’t at all useful. If a party adopts a few platform items that are “left” and some that are “right” (as all parties do), what good is it to point out that X party has adopted Y-wing stance on this issue? The only purpose that this could serve is to give ultras (left or right) ammunition to enforce orthodoxy to these “standard” categories. Meanwhile in the real world, as I mentioned, all parties and candidates adopt mixed platforms, and if you care at all about pragmatism and responding to real conditions, those positions should be evaluated individually on their merits rather than slapping on a left or right label.
This tendency to force everything into a black or white frame is what gives us politicians who run without platforms, on party label alone, and who then adopt unpopular or harmful positions when in office.
At some point we decided that platforms don’t matter, and if platforms exist, they must be orthodox. This is a problem!
All white nationalist parties describe themselves in these neutral terms, of course. I've yet to find a hardline anti-immigration party that is not also virulently racist.
Did anyone actually look into the "far-right" party that this purports to be?
The Örebro Party (Swedish: Örebropartiet, ÖP) is a local populist political party in Örebro, Sweden, led by Markus Allard. It holds seats in the Örebro municipal and regional assemblies, focusing on local populist policies such as reducing politicians' salaries, stricter migration, and free dental care.
Sweden has undergone a horrible transformation in the last several years where gang warfare and especially bombings have skyrocketed. Most of the new gang violence in the last several years is from migrants from North Africa and the Middle East, after Sweden implemented a generous immigration policy.
There's nothing to indicate that this party is "far right" at all. It's a populist-based party but the stance on immigration is definitely linearly correlated to the violence that was brought in by immigration. Lowering politicians' salaries and free dental care doesn't sound very far right to me.
Gosh, why do I not believe you, who is blaming black and brown immigrants (from multiple countries, even, as if they were coordinating) for violence
Your own link says,
"The defenders of Sweden’s once generous immigration policy will point out that, according to a report released in February 2024, 88% of the 14,000 people deemed to be active in criminal networks are Swedish citizens, and only 8% of these are dual citizens. 11% are non-citizens, and the remaining 1% was not known. An additional 48,000 people in Sweden were deemed to be linked to criminal networks, although not actively involved."
And it links to the report.
Did you think people wouldn't read it, or what? (Assuming you are not a bot, ofc. There seem to be a lot of them flooding every platform talking about this.)
The article you linked to also says:
"In an interview with SVT in January 2025, the Swedish Police’s Erik Lindblad said that they had seen an increase in what he termed “instrumental violence” where it is not people that are targeted but instead “fixed objects such as staircases and businesses”.
The reasons for the bombings are, in several cases, “suspected to be motivated by extortion against businesses or people linked to businesses and their families”, according to the Swedish authorities’ crisis information website. Mr. Lindblad also noted that the attacks can often be part of wider criminal conflicts, although these cases are often an exception to the rule, in their opinion.
Serious crime and the actors within those networks are often behind the attacks, according to Mr. Lindblad. “They use violence to get their way, irrespective of if it is revenge, or a battle over a drugs market, or extortion,” he said.
Thankfully, given that the explosions normally target doors, staircases, or businesses, the explosions do not always result in injuries and rarely kill people."
In any case, I do not actually care whether they are "far-right" or "far-left" or whateverthefuck. Left vs. Right is an infamously limited, binary horse-race way to talk about politics, one that groups disparate issues together arbitrarily. If you somehow convinced me they weren't fascist (though they are), I would not suddenly change my opinion of them just because the label changed.
The thing that actually matters is that they want to forcibly expel innocent people (including sending 2nd generation immigrants who were born and raised in Sweden to a country they have never lived in and have no connections to or familiarity with) from their homes en masse because it's convenient to blame them for all the nation's problems, based on zero evidence and maximum racism. There is no way to suggest something like this that is not monstrous.
Mullvad's mealy-mouthed defense of this is pathetic. There can be no tolerance for intolerance.
A headline and 20 comments and no mention of what this party actually stands for. Only simple labels such as "far-right". Ehh. The Republican Party in America is EXTREMELY far right by Swedish standards. So maybe one should base this on the actual substance rather than labels?
Additional context here is that they donated 75% of *all donations* to that party last year. 3x everyone else combined.
And that party is not just "kind of right wing", they believe in large scale "remigration" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remigration), which, to save you clicking the link, means "a far-right concept referring to the ethnic cleansing via mass deportation of non-white minority populations, especially immigrants and sometimes including native-born citizens, to their place of racial ancestry".
There is a wealth of difference between when random companies throw a few thousand at whatever the leading parties are, and this.
"ethnic cleansing" is an emotionally charged term that conjures genocide in the popular imagination. It is not a good descriptive term for what can rightly be described as regressive or ultra-nationalistic migration policy.
Those are left wing positions. Until 2023 the UK's Green Party's policy was to leave NATO, and there is still a lot of support in the part for that. When the UK's Labour party was socialist they were anti-EU. If you look at campaigned for what in the 1975 referendum on EEC membership its pretty clear: for example, Thatcher campaigned to remain, Tony Benn campaigned to leave. The remnants of the old left remain anti-EU even now.
its not uncommon. The overtly racist parties in the UK (e.g. the BNP has quite a lot of left wing policies (e.g. nationalisation of utilities), ending NHS outsourcing to the private sector, and free healthcare.
Its a combination that appeals to the worst off who compete with unskilled immigrants for jobs and rely on free healthcare etc.
It is a sensible combination to me. If you first believe that the government should provide a bunch of free stuff, but it doesn't at the moment because it's too expensive, it kind of makes sense that you would then think there need to be fewer people getting the free stuff so it remains affordable. The first people on the exclusion list would naturally be noncitizens.
OK, but please don't post low-substance comments on HN. Telling us you “don't care” about a topic achieves nothing other than instigating a generic tangent, which is against the guidelines. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them if you want to participate here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Disappointing if true. I can't read the original article[1], but the translation seems to agree. I've paid for Mullvad for _years_. Looks like I'll be taking my money elsewhere.
Article by a news media outlet that is considered very far left (communist). Try finding the same claim or description in any national Swedish media. You won't.
And everyone is free to chose not to buy products from people who have opinions that differs fundamentally from their own?
And some opinions cannot be tolerated in a democratic society. An obvious example is anti-liberal/anti-democratic opinions as they threaten the system itself. You cannot have a free democratic society if a majority removes the freedoms of a minority.
You have freedom of speech to advocate for your politics. The rest of us have the freedom of association to not want to be involved with you in any way.
These are not contradictory - they are both essential freedoms.
For most people, the concern is the money, not the voting. People don't want wealthy people reshaping politics to fit their interests through their wealth. They can vote for whomever they want.
This sounds a bit irrational. Where does "wealthy" start? Mullvad co-CEO donated ~ $500K, would him donating $100K have the same effect? What about $10K? What if a Mullvad _employee_ donated $500K?
What about work in units of median annual household disposable income, which are at least somewhat responsive to the distribution of money?
What % do you think a reasonable voter should accept a person donating to a political campaign before it causes concern about the donor's influence vs the median household's voice?
Off the top of my head, I'd guess 500k USD is about 1000% / 10x median annual household disposable income in SE, which I think would give the median voter pause.
For what it's worth (my own view): I think about 10% (~5k USD) is obviously acceptable, and I expect most anyone would agree that donations at that level are fine. I think your proposed 1000% is obviously unacceptable, and I expect most people would agree with me on that as well.
I'm not sure exactly where the level is that opinion would flip, but I feel pretty confident about those boundaries.
A company shouldn't be able to fire an employee over their opinion,[0] so that wouldn't matter to me. For a major owner, the donation amount starts to matter to me around $5-10K, but YMMV.
[0] I suppose unless they have a very influential position and it's about a matter that contradicts main company goals
Very weird interpretation of "voluntarily choose to not continue supporting them financially"
Presumably you want everyone to be forcibly compelled to finance the political parties they disagree with? And you would define this as a democratic society?
The guy owns half the company, so a significant part of the money I'm paying is involved. Yes, it is quite ethical to decide based on matters like that. It's not an employee or minor shareholder.
Not doing business with a company (for any reason btw) is not 'punishment'. Nobody is taking away anything from the company or any people involved with that company.
In a free democratic society nobody is forced to do business with anybody they don't agree with, and free speech means they can talk about their decision without fearing repercussion.
Haters will now say that the far right will destroy exactly that: "our" democracy. The Western morality is a joke, and many HN readers comment like an infant. I feel ashamed.
Everyone is free to make up their mind and vote for what they believe.
And if I disagree strongly enough then I am free to take my business elsewhere. Especially if the money I hand over might go to support speech and parties I fundamentally disagree with.
Freedom swings both ways, and freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from people thinking you're an asshole and not wanting anything to do with you. That's their freedom.
Nah. But for the supposed "privacy" you swap one "dumb pipe" for another pipe, which you have no clue about its operations beyond "trust me bro". Of course they may behave with good intentions and actually keep their promises but that's a rather huge IF.
And then quite often people will still use their regular tracking-browser to access tracking-websites xD
> The Örebro Party (Swedish: Örebropartiet, ÖP) is a political party in Sweden. The party was initially only a local party in Örebro, Sweden. Markus Allard is the party leader. According to Allard the party cannot be placed anywhere on the traditional left-right spectrum. Some of its key issues include lowered wages for politicians, ending the tax payer funding of various sculptures, monuments and art, large scale remigration, a stricter immigration policy, and free dental care.[3][4]
Any of the Swedes in here can corroborate the claims in the article about this right wing group? Especially about the extreme anti-immigration statements and put that in full translation and context?
Also what this group leader has done in Örebro to contextualize this quote
> ”I hope they will do similar things on the national level as in Örebro”, writes Daniel Berntsson to Flamman.
Tried to find something from the party itself, but found nothing on their homepage other than that they plan to publish a party programme "gradually, starting some time during the summer of 2026".
The claims in the social media post is pure bullshit. The party is a tiny (read: one person elected) radical populist left-economic-leaning nationalists. They have gained popularity for pointing out wasteful use of Örebro's municipalities resources, and their leader's fondness of lengthy ridiculing other parties politicians in lengthy debates, that he often publish on Instagram and YouTube.
Are his public stances on immigration precisely stated as remigration, or does he describe a thing such as remigration without explicitly naming it as such?
About his quote from wikipedia "They will also be forced to leave, even if they are born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedish." which links to this video tweet https://x.com/AllardKlipp/status/2060109271635771457 can you give full context/translation?
He says what is quoted when talking about criminals with immigrant roots. "Those [criminals] - they should get out, even if they were born in Sweden, because they do not have a connection to Sweden. They received a swedish passport but they have not become swedish [as belonging to swedish culture]. They are not interested [in becoming swedish] and here I'm ready to go on corpses...".
Overall his stance on immigration (taken from this video) is not as extreme as one can imagine reading HN comments. It is extreme but not to the extent that he's ready to push out anyone whos granddad was not Andersson.
No, they have 8 people elected: 3 in the region, 5 in the municipality.
They got 4,46 % of the votes in the region, and 7,92 % in the municipality. And who knows, maybe they'll use that 5 million SEK to get more seats in this years election.
People are surprised that a privacy-oriented businessman is right-wing is very strange.
"Millions" in the title is also misleading in this context - it's millions in Swedish Kronor, which is roughly $500K USD. A lot, but the title seems intentionally misleading.
I've also never really understood the cycle of boycotting things because you don't like how an individual spends their own money. Almost every company will employ people who have values you severely disagree with, and put money toward those causes. And turning to Proton as the alternative is... a choice?
What's going on? Proton faced a similar scandal recently. I think in their case sponsored a video by a far right vlogger. After that I saw people recommending Mullvad as an alternative.
Tweet from Proton's CEO last year: "10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned."
He repeatedly said his statement was politically neutral.
An important part of making "vote with your wallet" work is that people need an awareness of what their wallet is voting on. Telling people not to talk about problems with companies lets companies get away with way too much.
I've never really gotten the impression that Allard or the Örebro party support ethnic cleansing. What makes you say this? I'm not sure if any of their suggested policies would even be considered that controversial outside of Sweden.
you value privacy, but you don't think privacy is a political topic? VPNs, encryption, and other privacy tools are regularly under attack or protected by legislation and policy that is actively debated and lobbied for.
I think that you do care about politics, you just don't care about this particular topic or policy. That's your prerogative of course, but don't pretend you are wholly above the fray. I suspect if a company's founder had donated millions to a party aiming to mandate backdoored encryption you would suddenly find yourself to be a very political person.
Agreed. I use mullvad because I believe they are the best off the shelf choice. If I stopped using things because of the owners opinions, then I'd live in a cave.
Hi,
Mullvad has two owners, founders, and CEOs - Daniel Berntsson, and me, Fredrik Strömberg. All posts I've seen yesterday and today, including the newspaper articles, talk about Mullvad as if Daniel is the single owner, founder and CEO. It should be obvious that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission.
If you have any questions, comments or concerns you're welcome to comment on this thread, or email our customer support.
See below for the response you'll get from support:
-----
Mullvad is a political company. We fight for freedom of speech, freedom of information and the right to privacy. These are firmly held values of the founders of Mullvad.
Mullvad protects the right for people to express things we don't agree with. We protect the right of everyone to access views we don't agree with.
We also live these values by being tolerant in our daily work. Everyone is welcome to collaborate with Mullvad if they share these narrow core values. As employees, contractors, customers, suppliers, lobbyists, campaign partners or whatever it might be. No matter what their other opinions are and no matter whether the founders or anyone else in Mullvad dislike them. The founders themselves fundamentally disagree on several important issues.
This is what allows us to advance our common causes. Being in a tolerant and intellectually open environment is also liberating and promotes truth seeking.
The more people do this, the better a place the world will be.
It should be obvious that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission, in the same way that someone's opinions on animal rights, taxes or public healthcare policy isn't.
That said, if you no longer want to be a Mullvad customer for philosophical reasons, we think it's important to honor that. In that case, reach out to support.
Fredrik, while acknowledging everything you said, the fact remains some of my money can end up empowering politics I find repugnant.
If it were a small amount of money, it wouldn’t be an issue. If the politics at stake were less important, it wouldn’t be an issue.
They’re not going to stop at immigration, look at other places in the world to see the future risk.
Sorry, I was a paying and satisfied customer, and now I’m out.
> Being in a tolerant and intellectually open environment is also liberating and promotes truth seeking.
Maybe you should tell that to your cofounder? His actions certainly don't reflect this. Promoting ethnic cleansing is the opposite of this.
> Promoting ethnic cleansing
Do you have a source for this? I haven't seen this mentioned elsewhere.
People in this thread are slowly (or maybe not so slowly) realising "… this was also a business after all… just with a different "model"… huh". There's caring, there's caring PR, and then there's caring theatre.
It’s time to create nullvad, Fredrik.
Why does it say your comment was made 2 days ago, when the thread has only been up for 6 hours?
It's a HN thing, not down to the commenter. Sometimes threads are reactivated if the mods think a low profile discussion is worth a second chance or boost. The submission time doesn't always reflect the original submission. Sometimes it's due to a comment move or thread merge.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48721560
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48721551
PR companies have found that getting ahead of controversies is useful, so they invented time travel.
Hi Fredrik
I’m a long time Mullvad customer, likely paid Mullvad upward of 400€ in the past number of years, as well as recommended it to friends and family members.
What you seem to be missing in your comment, is that some of that money I paid, found its way to support an organisation that has extreme racist views.
I’ve reached out to support and requested a refund of my outstanding credit.
I’ll be moving on.
Not just “support”, it’s literally the main source of funds for the party. >70% of donations. If it was a small donation that would be sort of controversial but maybe defendable, but here we are talking about funding pretty much the whole party
> is that some of that money I paid, found its way to support an organisation that has extreme racist views.
Geez, I hope you do not pay give any money to Google, Microsoft and such. They have many employees and I am sure some of them donate to causes you would disagree with using (part of) the money you gave to those companies.
And, I have to wonder, do you vet your local bakery as well on how they use their money?
> Geez, I hope you do not pay give any money to Google, Microsoft and such.
Yes? I have been divesting from big tech. Not only do I feel good about it but the side effects have been positive too.
So have I and I'm using lots of OSS by people and groups that I'm politically, ethically, morally and whatever else-ly incompatible with and yet they build great stuff for free without restricting me and my use of it. If my revenue allows for it I'll gladly donate to all of them for their work (that is also running my side gig and homelab) without looking into their spending OT donation habits.
I'll happily keep on listening to radical left punk, RAC/rock against Communism as well as anti fascist and NS Black Metal as long as the music moves me.
I can't go around judging all day. Wherever I spend money, I'll probably disagree with 99% of what the people at the receiving end will do with it.
Yes, I check whether my local bakery is run by people with hateful politics.
Hmm... where have I heard this before?
In fact, the politics of my local bakery are among the easiest to be aware of! These people are telling on themselves.
Yet do you check the same for the company that manufactures your electronic devices, clothes, food, and provides your entertainment?
I think you'll find people tend to disagree on quite a great deal in aggregate.
This isn't an all or nothing approach. People can exercise the options they have without being a puritanical crazy about it. This isn't a strong argument. You can protest about how society is structured while still taking part it in.
You don't think there's a difference between a founder and a random employee?
Also, the concentration of service cost to political affiliation is much higher here.
An employee is different from a cofounder.
For example, I certainly boycott anything to do with Elon Musk, for the same kinds of reasons.
You seem to be falling into the "perfect is the enemy of the good" trap. It's not possibly to perfectly boycott every person and organization that deserves to be sanctioned, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it where it is possible.
So if Kim Jong Un ran your local bakery, you'd still buy his cakes? Or what's your point? That we need to be 100% flawless or else there is no point in doing anything at all?
You’re telling me you wouldn’t go to the Kim Jong Un bakery? I bet it would be delicious.
Anyway, yes, I do judge you if you publicly and loudly declaim small to medium sized businesses that work really hard for your privacy while handing out money to megacorps who are directly involved in tightening the global surveillance net.
Wait till you find out where your taxes end up fellow redditor
I did the same, except I'm paying for Mullvad through the Tailscale partnership, so I reached out to them and expressed my desire for them to partner with other privacy focused VPN providers like Njalla, Airvpn and others. I don't feel great about my money funding ethno-fascists in my country.
Godspeed!
Thank you for everything you do Fredrik. Very happy to be a customer of a company that supports freedom and privacy for everyone regardless of views.
Hello Fredrik! As a heavy user of Mullvad in the past, easily spending hundreds of euros over the years, I was reserving my judgement to see what the official statement on this would be. Thank you, now I have my answer.
> It should be obvious that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission.
It should be obvious that what people are concerned is their money being used to support these political causes, whether it was done in a way that keeps the company out of it or not is besides the point. Daniel, of course, is free to choose what to do with his money. I am, too, and based on this I will be making a choice to not spend any more money on Mullvad subscriptions. Nothing personal, and it's a shame because I have nothing but praise for the technical side of it. So long, and thanks for all the fish.
> That said, if you no longer want to be a Mullvad customer for philosophical reasons, we think it's important to honor that. In that case, reach out to support.
What a dismissive way to treat your customer. Basically the equivalent of someone on the American right saying “if you don’t like it you can get the hell out”, which tracks given Mullvad’s party of choice.
Edit: Downvote me all you want but it doesn’t change the fact that ethnic cleansing is wrong and by definition counter to free speech and human rights in general.
It’s called voting with your wallet. People in America do this, and are told to do this, all the time.
What would you like them to do? Roll over on the co-CEO and throw him under the bus, signaling to everyone that there is a “correct” point of view to have that Mullvad as a company is going to push and promote?
Individuals should be allowed to think and do what they want as an individual, as long as it isn’t compromising the company. The fact that they have 2 CEOs with differing political views seems like a healthy thing.
Freedom of speech is a political view that shouldn’t be tied to any one party.
Isn't that how all businesses operate? If customers don't like it then they can find an alternative vendor.
Yeah I just expected better of Mullvad as a long standing customer. They seemed pretty politically neutral which I prefer.
What evidence do you have that the company is not politically neutral?
Their co-founder (not just an employee) is bankrolling a party that’s leader has called for the expelling of all immigrants. This fact is not in dispute.
[delayed]
You're surprised the co-founder of a privacy company is advocating that a countries membership should be ... private?
"We have worked extremely hard to ensure that your internet browsing cannot be retrieved by the police, even with a warrant, and that you can be anonymous online" is not at all "politically neutral"
Like, I agree with and support their politics, but that doesn't make something politically neutral.
Some users prefer to ensure that they'll lose their business and livehood for having an opinion apparently.
> It should be obvious that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission.
No, in fact, the opposite of this is obvious.
An honest question: Would you like to live in a world where company/employer exerts more control over the views that are publicly expressed?
Do you actually want voting to happen via wallet?
This whole view kinda confounds me. I don't see how you can honestly profess to be on the tolerant/right side, morally, while trying to boycott someones business over his political views. Would you have preferred early feminists or LGBT advocates to be hounded in their professional life? Would it have been better for more people to do that?
If you want to vote for or against Örebropartiet, then just do it at the booth.
Plenty of people here basically seem to indirectly advocate for company based censorship and some kind of budget-plutocracy, and no matter how "morally correct" your views are, that is under no circumstances a worthwhile endeavor.
> An honest question: Would you like to live in a world where company/employer exerts more control over the views that are publicly expressed?
I don't really object to you asking this question, but I do object to you calling a rhetorical question "an honest question".
Who made you the judge of what's an honest question? Because I'm sure there's a class of people who actually want that.
This is about what customers are comfortable supporting. This guy doesn't just have what many consider to be unpalatable political beliefs, he's one of the biggest funders of what many consider to be an unpalatable political party. Lots of people don't want to give money to something which they feel will in part be funneled to an organization which is antithetical to their views. Realistically, I kind of doubt Mullvad is rolling in swimming pools filled with cash getting syphoned to neonazis, but that brings me to my next point...
For many, it's not just an intellectual position but an emotional one. This doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong, but you probably won't be able to reason them out of it. It's the same reason I don't listen to Michael Jackson. He's dead and none of that streaming revenue would go to him or to raping children but...yuck.
At the end of the day, there's an irony in this guy supporting the very freedoms on the internet which are being used to disseminate criticisms against him, and perhaps inducing people to starve one of the vehicles which helps maintain those freedoms.
> what many consider to be an unpalatable political party
That description fits every political party everywhere in the world.
How do you figure?
Hi Fredrik, long time user of your service.
I have to say, this is a disappointing message. The thing about intolerant movements is that tolerance doesn't fix them, it makes them worse and lets them accumulate power until they can destroy the tolerant.
I'd recommend reading Karl Popper and his Paradox of Tolerance, which he formulated after seeing this exact thing play out in his native Austria with the rise of the Nazis.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
So you're a political company, but you don't want people to examine the politics of the people running the company? That seems naive.
>> Being in a tolerant and intellectually open environment ...
Karl Popper said, "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
>> the same way that someone's opinions on animal rights, taxes or public healthcare ...
We're not talking about reasonable people disagreeing about tax policy, we're talking about free expression, the entire purpose of Mullvad.
When you make a large donation to a political party whose most fundamental policy is restricting the free expression of people, that is wholly incompatible with everything Mullvad says they stand for.
When a founder and executive with influence over Mullvad policy and operations is exposed actively and financially support restricting free expression of people, it's not "tolerant" to pretend that's somehow compatible with the mission and brand of the company.
> restricting the free expression of people
I don’t support remigration, but calling immigration “the free expression of people” is a stretch. It’s orthogonal.
You can argue that remigration isn’t protecting the privacy of those who are surveilled by the government or deported to repressive countries that surveil their population. But Mullvad’s product protects even those people (it must, because it hides the identity of who’s using it from itself).
Örebropartiet policies directly target and restrict the religious, educational, and cultural expression of people who legally reside in Sweden.
Their polices focus on the way people dress, the languages they speak in public, the institutions and schools they build, the traditions they practice.
People would be forced to self-censor their speech, their beliefs, and their behavior.
It's not a "stretch". It's the whole program.
The words "immigration" or "remigration" do not appear in the comment you are replying to. That's wholly your own construction.
I'm always wary of people bringing up the paradox of tolerance; most of the time, it's just used as an excuse to justify censorship while claiming to be opposed to it. "When you censor me, you're being intolerant and that's wrong; when I censor you, I'm doing it in the name of tolerance, so I'm correct".
I'm not Swedish, so it's possible there's something that I am missing. But skimming the wikipedia page for the party (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party#), I don't see anything that says the party is pro censorship.
If you want to boycott companies for the views of founders or employees (basically incentivizing corporate censorship), then you are the intolerant one from a Popper point of view.
I see... so the people boycotting companies over jim crow policies in the civil rights era were the intolerant ones?
Sounds like myrmidon would have gleefully bought a Volkswagon Bug in 1941.
>"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
does that fight against "intolerant" also include fighting people from other culture that are systematically and religiously opposed against your current society and its tolerance and will undermine it within the next couple decades by reproducing more? nvm im aware asking for self awareness is too much.
> restricting the free expression of people,
Is it? They appear to be some sort of hardcore pseudo libertarians with some nationalistic vibes. To an extent that seems to overlap with Mullvad’s declared value?
> When you make a large donation to a political party whose most fundamental policy is restricting the free expression of people
Where can I read more about how this is the fundamental policy of the Örebro party?
So far as I can tell, the main source of this claim is the comment you are responding to, and similar.
I think the real issue is this: "The party is heavily opposed to political corruption and high politician incomes and wants to reduce the wages of politicians and senior officials." (from Wikipedia, among other sources.)
> If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
yeah i'm sick and tired of hearing this, because it gets applied very asymmetrically.
we routinely tolerate certain kinds of intolerants and silence other, and that sucks.
case in point: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/17/hamtramck-mi...
people happily tolerate lgbt-intollerant people, afraid of being called islamophobic and/or intollerant, and but we do not tollerate at all people that have been calling that risk out for years.
so yeah, popper's writings are being grossly misused, and i'm sick and tired of seeing that come out in every discussion on these topics.
---
Also: if only mullvad is taking that kind of political stance (no-log vpn etc)... maybe you should think twice about who is actually on your side.
I don't see him saying he doesn't want people to look into that. What I see is an explanation for why he thinks the company is better for having a multitude of views and opinions on their staff, a correction of some lazy reporting in the media and stated tolerance for people who no longer want to use said company's products for perceived value incompatibility (which he also seems to disagree with though).
"Rules for thee, but not for me"
Classic
Thanks Fredrik, will actually be switching to Mullvad.
Indeed I see this as a positive. There is a common meme that the CIA might well run VPN companies. It would seem less likely for Mullvad.
> less likely
how so?
> This is what allows us to advance our common causes. Being in a tolerant and intellectually open environment is also liberating and promotes truth seeking.
Nope, that is what will get you taken over by the assholes. Reasonable defense is necessary in reality. There ARE bad actors, they must be kept out.
Fascism is not an opinion, a thing we can simply disagree with and move on. It’s a crime.
How do you call a friend of a fascist?
I'm pretty familiar with these right-wingers that claim to fight for "freedom of speech" they all end up fighting for "freedom of speech for the things I want to say, jail for those who oppose me." The 2024-2025 swing was pretty extreme on that front.
Political extremists are all the same, left or right, nobody should be surprised because they seek power above all else.
I had been pretty concerned about the level of advertising for Mullvad I've seen recently, that's usually a really bad sign for a VPN type company. But seeing this comment, in combination with the news article linked here, tells me everything I need to know for trust.
VPNs are all about trust. Mullvad has completely broken all trust with me.
If you still wonder why there are sudden attacks on Mullvad, I "heard" there are Chinese (in addition to the others; dual- / triple- vendoring is key) LLM-based tools to check for swarm origins and campaigns.
Slightly tangential on Swedish society, there are similarities between USA and Sweden. There's a large segment of society that is white and very blond, and there's a largish segment which is not. Along that same line there are all kinds of divisions: economic, education, religious, sets of values, and of access to things and possibilities. What pisses me off is that the cast of "CEOs of successful companies" live in an sphere of privilege where they really are not bothered at all by the brown people. They in fact have plenty of places to go, a vast archipelago, out of reach for anybody who can't afford a boat. Though they get all the benefits, including cheap qualified labor from people who had to leave their homelands displaced by poverty, conflict and war. I'll switch VPN provider too.
One of these days we will elect somebody who is corrupt and morally corrupt, incompetent and poorly educated and who'll promise to screw us over many times and in many positions, and we will let him just do so so that there are concentration camps for the brown people.
Remember calling cards 20 years ago? Spooks used to run many of those for mass surveillance on the cheap. In the same vein, VPN companies are perfect for creepy spooks so I've always been weary of them.
Now this massive media attack campaign finally convinced me Mullvad must be uncompromised. At least from Five Eyes.
I bet VPN services owned by the spook-corporate complex would be 100% politically correct, have squeaky clean PR/comms/ads, and have support from media (at least no hit pieces).
There have been multiple posts about this and hundreds of comments, so there is clearly appetite to discuss it, although none of the submitted links have been particularly detailed.
I'm going to merge the other threads into this one, which is why you'll see some anachronistic timestamps.
The post linked has been removed, so I don't know what more we can speculate upon, 650+ comments in.
It's strange to see HN mods allow this much attention to a political, and contentious issue.
Everyone who's somehow mad about this probably don't even realize that they are against free speech
"Mullvad AB and its parent company Amagicom AB are 100% owned by founders [1 person] and Daniel Berntsson [...]"[0]
So I'll assume he owns about 50%. Well, that ends my usage of Mullvad.[1] I appreciate that probably many of Mullvad's employees have different views, and obviously Berntsson has every right to his opinions and to express them, and I also appreciate that someone can have control over an opinionated company and run it for one particular set of reasons but not for other causes that someone believes in, but in the end I just don't want my money supporting anti-people causes.
[0] https://mullvad.net/en/about
[1] If it was a small amount, say less than 5% or maybe 10%, I might have decided differently. But it's still millions, so probably not.
A big question I suppose is what Mozilla are going to do in reaction?
As Mozilla VPN is white labelled Mulvad I think
To be fair, Örebropartiet can also be called an extreme left party. It’s complicated…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party
Does it matter if they are left or right?
The point is, they want to round up lawful citizens and turf them out of the country because they have the audacity to be slightly foreign, or worse born to someone foreign.
that is the issue, not how much tax/spend big/little government.
Exactly, the problem is not left/right it's the authoritarianism, which is again a huge threat to the world after being held mostly in check in Western democracies for many years.
People tend to forget about the "Last Man" part of Fukuyama's "The End of History and the Last Man", but we are definitely in the phase of the Last Man seeking conflict and fighting against our hard-won freedoms.
I don't see how, given their answers to simple questions as described in the "2026 run up to the elections" section, this party could ever be considered a leftist party.
They are very pro education. But that's basically the only thing, all the other answers are enthusiastic right wing answers
How populist party can root for education? Educated people wouldn't go in populist direction. Of course, it the education stays unbent to their views
They are far too small to have any chance of influencing education. The simpler explanation would be that there is a strong nationalist current. Think "our people are the best, let's make them even better and throw out the others"
Because populists can say they are "For" something and just not do it. Their supporters largely won't check the results.
Same reason why US republicans say they are the party of fiscal responsibility despite being directly responsible for most of the debt of the US
Why wouldn't educated people be swept up by populism? They're human like the rest of us. Maybe you should stop thinking that having an education makes you a moral person, it just means you have an education.
Horseshoe Theory strikes again:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
Horseshoe theory, rather than being as described,is actually caused by far right parties being more willing to label themselves as left. E.g. national socialists.
This is a bot. It has been commenting all day every day. Why has it still not been removed?
This is a bot. It has been commenting all day every day. Why has it still not been removed?
Sounds like the logical evolution of left/right-populism into 'absolutist-populism' ;)
To add to the context. The founder of the was the chairman for the youth organization of Vänsterpartiet (English name: The left party), the furthest left party in the Swedish parliament, and he recruited members primarily from the same organization when he was kicked out. The reason he got kicked out was that he was seen praising the Revolutionary Front, a far-left extremist political and militant network in Sweden.
It should be added that the area where they are active is in the local government of Örebro Municipality, a place with a total population of 160,143 people. Looking at the political leanings of parties for a small local government with the lens of national parties might not give a very clear picture. Their strategy is also directed toward local voters, not national voters, through a strategy called the 12% line.
It doesn't seem that complicated to be honest with you. That is how they self identify but none of their policies seem particularly left wing. At least not from that Wikipedia page. Extremely left wing dental care is the best I will give them.
What about more social housing, reductions in working hours, and opposition to privatisation? Sounds left wing to me.
They have been called Marxist-Lenninist by more mainstream politicians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party#2021_bus_rap...
Maybe we could meet in the middle and call them a nationalist socialist workers party.
You could, just as long as you keep it at that. The term actually does describe a valid political ideology: socialism combined with nationalism instead of the more common socialism combined with globalism, i.e. internationalist socialism ('workers of the world, unite' etc.). The association with Nazism makes it close to impossible to use the term in a 'neutral' way but in itself it just describes a nationalist movement which espouses socialist ideas.
> Extremely left wing dental care is the best I will give them.
Free dental care is considered "extemely left wing" now? That's just bizarre tbh.
If a country would decide to use tax money to provide health care services for free to everybody that's not much different than using tax money to maintain an infrastructure network that's free to use (like roads), or free police and firefighting services - and I think none of those examples are considered particularly 'left-wing'.
> Free dental care is considered "extemely left wing" now? That's just bizarre tbh.
No more bizarre than the idea of free speech being ceded to the right.
Apparently even air conditioning is now a left vs right culture war issue...
I was being facetious. Unfortunately enlightened horseshoe centrists didn't want to hear.
They're all left-wing
Lol, so Hitler was 'left wing' because he built the Reichsautobahn, got it...
Just like Franco in Spain created the social healthcare system, but they still executed "reds" in the street.
That's typical for extremist parties, AKA Horseshoe theory. IRL Erdogan's party went so far to the right that they started actually adopting very socialist/communist policies. The party names is AKP which stands for "justice and development party" but many people are calling it "Allahs Communist Party" since in Turkish communist is written with K and they are islamists doing communist stuff.
Their stance seems to be "people can do things on their own personal time":
https://mastodon.online/@mullvadnet/116822244689326681
And we can choose not to fund those things.
I'm Swedish, but never heard of Örebropartiet before. I tried looking into their website and it doesn't say a lot.
Translated from Swedish wikipedia: --- Örebropartiet was founded by Markus Allard in the spring of 2014, when he was recently expelled from the Left Party and the Young Left. [...] Among the party's main issues are reduced politicians' salaries, reduced bureaucracy, civil servant responsibility, assimilation policy and the repatriation of people who do not adapt. ---
I think it is very reasonable to demand that people try to integrate when coming to a new country - learn the language, get into the culture. As a Swedish person I think this is missing from our integration politics, which is an often talked about topic in the last years.
In the end this is a political question and sadly instead of engaging in dialogue the reaction to these questions feels like it most often leads to polarization and division. Inclusion means also including people with different beliefs and respecting their opinions, even if we don't share them. Through understanding comes empathy.
Can recommend "The Righteous Mind" by moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt who discusses this in a book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Righteous_Mind
Fun fact: we get a dopamine release when taking an opposing stance and then seeing (subjective) proof of our stance. It requires self-discipline and fighting your impulses to avoid polarization.
I don't think it's reasonable to "demand" integration. What should happen is that the existing cultures should be open and welcoming enough so that new-comers want to take part. Also, I like the idea of immigrants bringing their culture with them (and in some cases, that may be the last representation of that culture) and welcoming people to learn about it.
Multi-culturalism should be about championing different cultures and not forcing everyone into a cultural homogeneity.
Why is the burden always on the host nation and never the immigrants?
the burden should always be on the ones who are stronger to accommodate those who are weaker.
the majority needs to welcome and support the minority.
and it's not that there is no burden on the immigrants. they still have to learn to understand the local language, culture, rule of law, etc...
we should learn from each other and take the good from each. the burden for that is on both sides.
I appreciate the candid response. It shouldn't be so hard for people to just clearly state the premises that motivate their beliefs.
>the burden should always be on the ones who are stronger to accommodate those who are weaker.
Is this a universal principle? Does this come with any limits at all? A salient example that comes up often: classrooms tend to have a small handful of extremely disruptive students that ruin the experience for everyone else. The current thinking is to not suspend/expel these kids because they are disadvantaged or whatever. But in doing so the other kids suffer greatly, not to mention the teachers.
How do you manage different dimensions of strength/advantage? It is the weakest in society (women, children) that bear a disproportionate burden of allowing large amounts of immigration from third-world countries. Why are the rights of women and children secondary to the rights of immigrants?
Always? Never?
There are > 190 countries in the world and many of them require immigrants to meet at least the same criteria for employment and assistance as born citizens.
Why do people pretend they don't understand context? What do you get out of posting this irrelevant pedantic response?
GP literally addresses your points. I think we’re very welcoming in most of Europe, adopt others’ traditions, and are not too imposing. Just, you know, leave women alone and don’t aim fireworks at ambulances.
Dismissing any amount of integration is chicanery. We’re pro-social creatures, and knowing the lay of the land makes your life better.
compared to the rest of the world europe is absolutely not welcoming. heck, even as a native german if you move from one region in germany to another you are treated as an unwelcome outsider. less so in big cities where you are more anonymous but still. if you are lucky you can find "your tribe" and your children may be accepted if they grow up there. the only places in germany where i ever felt welcome was linux user groups, and other fringe groups which as a whole had more of an outsider status.
> Just, you know, leave women alone and don’t aim fireworks at ambulances.
Where I'm from (Northern Ireland) harassing women and attacking emergency services have been part of the culture for as long as I remember. Would you suggest that people arriving should actively take part in these behaviours?
I remember a discussion I had with a English teacher from UK who immigrated to Sweden during the 1990s. They said that in UK, when a government employee would visit a house regarding dept or some other problem, they would bring a large police escort and then they and the neighbourhood would had a big brawl that generally ended with the police winning and then most of the participants would go to the pub. It was just how things worked. The guy were majorly surprised that in Sweden, the government employee could just knock on the door and talk to the person with no police and no brawl.
I would assume that if attacking emergency services is the norm in Northern Ireland, so is police escorts of emergency services. That is not the norm in Sweden, through it has become the norm for certain regions where emergency services no longer feel safe going on an emergency call. The downside is that if the police is delayed, so is the emergency service, and naturally the quality of emergency service is reduce in those locations which some people say is a form of discrimination.
That’s… a tough one. Bit of a loaded question. I would say “don’t engage in anti-social behaviour regardless of the cultural milieu”, I’m sure NI has much better traditions to partake in?
> That’s… a tough one.
But then we're getting a bit deeper into the issue. These are things that need to be considered if you want to mandate "integration" surely.
We now want people to integrate but we also recognise that there's a higher moral code which should supersede local customs. Is that correct? Then it seems like integration isn't the actual aim, but the shaping of people into a sort of ideal which is actually removed from local cultures.
We're also onto picking and choosing between the "better" and worse local traditions. But who is the arbitrator for which traditions are good and which are bad?
What if the purpose of integration is merely to bring people closer to the local average, ironing out the outlier kinks and helping them feel secure in society?
I did a bit of the integration course by choice, even though it’s not mandatory as a EU national. I found it fine, a bit boring because we grew up with most of these customs. The Flemish ‘traditions’ were all new to me, and I also realise I don’t follow them; but respect some if I’m invited to people’s houses.
I think we’ve made a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to integration. It’s neither super forced and awful nor useless.
Northern Ireland is definitely atypical. An English friend of mine moved over there a few years ago as his wife is from there and her family all live in the same area. I can't imagine him being considered as "integrated" for at least a few decades.
(My experience with Irish/Northern Irish people is that they're very friendly and welcoming, but I've only been there a couple of times).
I'm not saying that people shouldn't want to integrate, I'm saying that "demanding" it is problematic. Imagine grandparents being brought over from a different country and they don't speak the language - should they be forced to attend language school? What level of language ability would be considered the minimum and does that also include reading/writing?
By all means provide encouragement and resources so that people can adapt to their new situation, but don't demand it.
Yeah, I know. That’s why I say that no one is ever happy with where you set the limit. I think demanding A2 in language is reasonable, for example. Yes, demanding, even if it’s in a reasonably long timespan. We demand much more out of everyone born in the country, don’t we?
> I think it is very reasonable to demand that people try to integrate when coming to a new country - learn the language, get into the culture.
What kind of things might be involved in a mandate for people to "get into the culture?"
It’s a hot topic, but in Belgium some people are taught how to take the bus, do their taxes, and not harass women. One of my Dutch teachers led the integration course and said this stuff was really difficult to land.
If you come from a culture of groping women, not doing is gonna be a challenge. I get it. But we’ve also built mosques and have pagan festivals and allow public servants to wear their choice of religious attire. I think it’s a balance, but nobody is ever happy with wherever you set the balance.
When I learn the local language, I’m happier; it’s nice to talk to people. Not everyone agrees.
Tja.
TIL Belgians don't grope women.
Or pretend not to, at school. YMMV.
Don't we also get a dopamine release from empathy, or is it just no fun?
I’ve read a few books about dopamine/motivation/common neurotransmitters and this has never come up. In my amateurish view I think empathy is more connected to oxytocin (which afaik does release during social connections, which The book ”The molecule of more” covers a bit).
Depends on if Atlas Shrugged is your Bible or not.
And for anyone who treats Atlas Shrugged as a Bible, I hope you're aware that Alan Greenspan was almost surely more of a true believer than you are, and his legacy is pretty well summarized by having to admit that his practically religious belief in Randian ideology led to the most severe global economic downturn since the Great Depression.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5lZPWNFizQ
Of course after his admission modern Objectivists began to predictably denounce Greenspan (Ayn Rand's favorite boy) with various "No True Scotsman" arguments.
I saw this a couple of days ago, here's the original article that broke the news, in Swedish: https://www.flamman.se/techprofil-ger-miljoner-till-orebropa...
It includes a short statement from the CEO.
Örebropartiet is like the weirdest party in Sweden. It's named after "Örebro", a Swedish city with 125k population. The party's founder, Markus Allard, used to be far left politician before turning far right.
Their party program is all over the place. They stand for free dental care, direct democracy and deporting immigrants.
Marcus is also known for profanity and foul language in council meetings.
An oddity in Swedish politics is that if a local party manages to get 12% of the votes in a constituency they are eligible for getting a seat in parliament, and can skip the regular 4% popular vote rule.
Örebropartiet actually has a chance to get into national government next election (Fall 2026) since their local support is quite strong. Times are weird
> Markus Allard, used to be far left politician before turning far right.
Less weird than you might think, Mussolini was one of the most prominent socialists in Italy before turning fascist.
I’m not Swedish. Does Mullvad do what it says on the tin? That’s all that matters.
The CEO’s extracurricular activities are none of my business.
Let's draw this to its ultimate conclusion.
Would you subscribe to an excellent VPN service, if it was run by [insert universally abhorred brutal dictator from history here]?
A thought experiment:
Let's think of the other extreme as well: exactly the same excellent VPN service, is run by an almost-the-best-person-in-the-world who has just one small quirk that makes them not 100% perfect for you (they pat kittens not as often as you'd like them to do). Obviously there is a border between your extreme and mine, which border defines "use" and "no use" cases for you. And now: wherever this border is - should it be the same for everyone?
Just like everything else in life, different people have different borders and that's fine.
I don't understand the point of this thought experiment. Are you trying to disqualify the idea of boundaries because they're imperfect (which is a very flawed argument) or are you going somewhere else I can't figure out at all?
I agree there might be a more or les arbitrary border, and it will probably be in different places for different people.
However the original statement:
> The CEO’s extracurricular activities are none of my business.
Basically says that no border should exist, and it makes no difference at all who provided the service as long as the service itself is excellent.
That is a fundamentally different argument that I very much disagree with.
Every time you use a kitten to support flawed logic, a kitten dies.
I don't really understand the point you're trying to make with that thought experiment.
We can easier look at conclusion people make about banks and stock options. Will people invest money into index fonds and pension fonds if those fonds invest money into companies that produce and sell weapons to abhorred brutal dictators? What about buying stocks from telecommunication producers who operate in abhorred brutal dictatorships and who helps those dictators to control their population?
We should improve society somewhat
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...
Next iteration of this smear article: “Mullvad is basically HitlerVPN”
Someone doesn't want people using the best VPN available, hmm...
Why can't we have a VPN run by normal people?
Because normal people don’t want to deal with the headaches. Your choices are weird people or intelligence cutouts. (Or abandoning any attempt at privacy in an attempt to be ideologically pure.) Sorry, but those are the options.
Because there are almost no normal people. Everybody's a jerk in private, to somebody, sometime. Everybody's got opinions that half the population doesn't like.
Okay but wanting an ethnic cleansing isn't usually one of them and even among those who do want it, most don't donate money towards making it happen
Why doesn’t Apple just make a built in iOS native vpn that can be toggled (effectively) from the swipe down menu control and is paid monthly or part of iCloud
I doubt they’ll go beyond the currently bundled Safari iCloud Private Relay, which I quite appreciate actually.
And which they disable in any country with significant internet censorship, where having a VPN actually matters.
This "far right" slur on any party that is anti immigration makes me immediately suspect this party probably isn't far right.
It's a shame, because real racist extremists/nazis benefit from this lumping together of legitimate concern about immigration and actual Nazis.
There is a difference between being anti-immigration and pro-remigration.
Being anti-immigration in a country that is shrinking is just stupid. Being pro-remigration is far-right and evil.
I try to turn it other way in my head, like if Mullvad got to know somehow political views of some of their customers and say "We don't like what you say, so we decide to end our business with you. We don't want our infra to be used to spread opinions like yours."
You’re not taking it far enough. What if Mullvad has someone you disagree with as a customer, and does nothing about it. Does this mean that Mullvad is supporting them? Does this mean that you have to stop supporting Mullvad? What about Mullvad’s landlord? The company that provides them their electricity? Their internet provider? Their internet provider’s internet provider? Should you boycott the entire internet because Mullvad has not been given the BGP death penalty?
They could do it, some people would align with that stance, and some wouldn't. Exactly how it plays out being a customer: now we've discovered he supports a far-right party here in Sweden, I can choose to not support the CEO with my money and let others know about their political leaning to decide by themselves if they want to support him and his business aware that their money might got to far-right parties.
I don't see any issue with your flipped argument, it's the same thing, no?
I imagine that if a company really denied a customer due to disagreement on some views there would be similar flood of comments like "my views is my problem, I pay you money you must do business with me". Maybe I'm wrong though
Companies can absolutely refuse a customer and many do. Companies will often have public rules about not doing business with weapons manufacturers or tobacco producers.
They also can refuse business due to political stance. They can even give different prices to different customers.
There's an enormous imbalance between company and customer that you're ignoring, not to mention the difference between a private person and a company's very public personas who own said business.
If a company was sniffing around to learn my political views, that would be a bit intrusive, wouldn't it? I wouldn't expect the same level of anonymity if I were the CEO of a company like Mullvad. There's also a disparity between "I'm taking my business elsewhere, good luck without my $10 a month!" (or whatever Mullvad costs...) and "we've decided to not allow you to use this service".
How large a disparity is depends a lot on whether a company has a lock on a market. Generally, if a vendor in a crowded market decided to turn away customers who are XYZ voters (as an example) I'd be more apt to just comment on that as a business strategy than as a "how dare they, they must accept all customers!" Like, if you are one of 20 VPN providers and you think you can be successful by turning away customers.. well, OK. Good luck with that.
If it's a provider with a monopoly that's a bit different. I live in an area with only one choice of provider for electricity. So I don't think they should be allowed to refuse service to anybody who is paying their bill, even people I vehemently disagree with.
If the far-right parties they're supporting are similar to MAGA in the U.S., what they're doing is taking customer money and funneling it into a political effort to do just what you're describing - just in a different way. "We don't like groups X, Y, and Z, so we're going to fund a political effort to take their rights away by using government."
As I understand it, the Örebro party pushes for deporting immigrants and has a "Sweden belongs to the Swedes" policy that includes deportation for even those born in Sweden if their parents were born in, e.g., Somalia. So basically, "we don't like certain people, so we want to use customer money to force them out of our country". That really doesn't paint Mullvad as the victim, here.
Well guess I won’t be renewing my subscription this month then.
Any other verified sources?
Somewhat of a verification, here's Mullvad's response to the post on Mastodon: https://mastodon.online/@mullvadnet/116822244689326681
(Mullvad reply content copied here)
>> Mullvad is a political company fighting for free speech, free information and privacy, with two equal co-founders, co-owners and co-CEOs who fundamentally disagree on many issues. Daniel's donation to a political party is private and not part of Mullvad's mission. We protect the right to express and access views we disagree with. We welcome anyone sharing these core values, whatever their other opinions. We are happy to refund others who don't, where we can.
To be fair... I'm not sure how you could take any other position as a privacy-first VPN. By technical nature, you have to believe pretty hard in 'people's business is their own business and not mine.'
I'd rather have a founder who believes whatever, but supports others rights to disagree vehemently, than one who agrees with what I believe but is less flexible on allowing others choice.
Thanks. Also fuck.
The other founder made a comment on another HN submission.[1]
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48696800
Will you be creating a VPN?
I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
A right to say something is not the same as the right to say (and do) something without being called out on it.
He has the right to do what he’s doing. Other people have the right to react and say “That sucks, it’s against my values, I no longer trust you or want to do business with you.”
Okay - but that doesn't mean I'm not going to weigh up what you say when I'm choosing a business to support; especially if it's not in a professional context.
There are some things that I won't ever defend your right of saying them, to be honest.
But does this swedish Party say any things like that?
Yes. They want to get rid of immigrants for example.
Mass deportation like that is a terrible and destructive idea but that's well short of being unspeakable.
That is like saying that the judicial system wants (all) people to go to prison. It leaves out the rather crucial "which people".
Agree. This is more of a "ST Voyager 'Nothing Human'"-case.
brave! but fortunately you are safe because no one is challenging his right to say it.
We need to add something to this nice rule about using services that are good from people we don't (fully) agree with.
I'm not personally inclined to be so strict about this, but there are people with objections against the Proton CEO who once agreed with Trump on twitter, or DHH (there is this one blogpost about his extreme views). Etc.
Örebropartiet is not a extremist far-right party. All their policies is extreme far-left except immigration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
Seems more complicated than that, in reading the wiki.
Wild. I spent about 3 months living in Örebro while on contract with a company based there.
This sounds very much far right and not left at all to me
> Markus Allard takes inspiration from marxist ideology[32] and unites the "productive" classes of society against the "Transferiat", with the "Transferiat" being a term coined by Allard to describe the classes of society that lives off of transfers that are a net negative for society such as those who, despite having an ability to work, live off of social welfare benefits, as well as those who work "made-up services"[33] that the party deems serve no societal function, such as bureaucrats, consultants, public sector communications specialists, strategists and HR-specialists.
It's practically a copy and paste of the ideology behind "doge".
Sounds like a branch of the Technocracy movement which Musks grandfather helped found.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_N._Haldeman
"The technocracy movement proposed replacing partisan politicians and business people with scientists and engineers who had the technical expertise to manage the economy"
Whoa whoa whoa. I don't think it's at all fair trying to throw Technocracy under the bus. The guilt by association doesn't look great! But Technocracy was interesting. It had some hopes & values, and it wanted people thinking and working materially, scientifically, having a perception of the world better than just money. It had some real neat idea. Wild & absurd? Yes that too. But I don't enjoy the casual drive by shoot down!
Weird, I didn't think I was throwing technocracy under the bus. What makes you say that?
This is just a rephrasing of the lumpenproletariat, coupled with the professional-managerial class. You could also refer to the latter as a modern version of the lumpenbourgeoisie (although this term is applied rather broadly). It sounds more like pro-labor, pro-work, anti-lumpen Marxism. In no way “right-wing” unless you want to call North Korea “right-wing”, which is a very ultra-left thing to do (what orthodox Marxists call left deviationism).
By your logic USSR was far right.
No, I'm fairly sure you could not find a quote like that about the USSR.
You would be wrong. The people you described were called "тунеядцы" in USSR. With a possible exception of bureaucrats who existed as a result of centralized government but were also called "a barrier for the working class" by Lenin etc.
I also highly doubt USSR would accommodate people who move in and don't bother to integrate into the culture and speak Russian. Ask people from entire countries where Moscow did Russification, and those people didn't even move in from outside they already lived there.
The trial of Joseph Brodsky is a fascinating insight into the workings of the USSR https://www.nytimes.com/1972/10/01/archives/the-trial-of-jos...
They had strong opinions of what was deemed "socially useful" work and were not above abolishing those pursuits they deemed to be useless.
All able-bodied people were expected to work (in approved roles) and you would be provided a job if you couldn't find one but if you refused to work they would deem you a "social parasite" and prosecute you if you didn't reform your behavior.
Somehow, people seem to forget that Marxism is an ideology of workers.
>Somehow, people seem to forget that Marxism is an ideology of workers.
Not really, Marx and company were nobles, lawyers, etc. The ideology concerns provoking a civil war and taking over, workers rights is just the rhetoric to cause the revolution. The worker’s paradise never materializes because it’s not actually about that.
This is true but the ideology was packaged and sold as a movement for the working class. My observation had more to do with the modern interpretation of it as somehow being a license to not work, which appears comical when compared with how it was instituted.
Not all of the component parts of the ideology are necessarily false due to their introduction and popularization by Marx. Personally, I find his writings obtuse and his beliefs abhorrent. There is, however, merit in the idea that the state should benefit its people, a large percentage of which are the productive working class, but it shouldn't be ruled by the working class. The state is its people and their culture, it shouldn't oppose their interests or subjugate and exploit them for the advancement of ideals alien to them.
Whoever downvotd you is unaware that the USSR tried a seven day work week. It was not about workers.
This is actually very far left, just not the current wealthy-urban-lgbtq far left. USSR marxists and Maoists held the same views, where the individual's main function was to work and refusal to work or low productivity required either reformation (aka often, Gulag) or hunger.
"Those how do not work, do not eat" - Mao
Interestingly, psychoanalysis in the USSR was aimed at helping the patient to go back to work, for instance.
Marxism, communism and socialism are all extreme far-left ideologies.
Being anti-immigration doesn't automatically swing the party to the right. As written on Wikipedia, "left-conservative" is probably the best label.
The Swedish far-left loves to, for instance, brand the governing party in Denmark as far-right, but they are actually also left-conservative.
It is possible (shocker) to be liberal and progressive, whilst also being pro-assimilation, pro-deportation, anti-immigration.
> Marxism, communism and socialism are all extreme far-left ideologies.
Yes, but the behavior in that quote, cutting social services, is none of the above. Using language associated with far left movements while promoting far right policies leaves you as a far right party.
> Being anti-immigration doesn't automatically swing the party to the right
Literally nothing in the quote I quoted is about immigration (though they hit that checkbox as well and it absolutely does swing you to the right).
> cutting social services
By providing free healthcare and dental care or at least reducing out of pocket costs?
National Socialism in a nutshell.
In the U.S., before Trump was elected, immigration control and deportating illegal immigrants were things that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama ("left" politicians) campaigned on.
I guess emotions/politics are more important than facts?
A very quick search yielded this short clip of Hillary Clinton:
https://youtube.com/shorts/Zsq32nNjNoE (no endorsement of overlays/etc intended, just the first result in the search)
I think this is more nuanced than this article or mullvad themselves present it as. What you give to mullvad as a form of payment will end up in the pockets of the funding members which allows them to make relatively large political donations, but it's also not as deep as presented. What gets seemingly glossed over how involved large companies are in pushing parties like orebro into relevancy.
As a basic example, youtube started pushing a LOT of anti-immigrant videos. I never watched them since after few minutes it's obvious that it is clear ragebait, but I keep getting them recommended without showing any interest in them and they're all clocking in anywhere from 300k to millions of views.
There is virtually no way to resist the temptation of being anti-immigrant/racist/whatnot when you see abusive behavior exploiting the good will of the european union especially when there is state level abuse to extract additional funding from the shared support pool. This being extremely unpopular gives motivation to keep all of this under wraps as much as possible which only fuels the fire when "information" is made available on social media platforms where you benefit from blowing this out of proportion and then if you try to question it you are labeled which naturally breeds resentment.
--
Scrolled for few minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6-zhxpNsVQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARKZMX4iGZ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmlI4ICp-OI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX-IKLSFH_I
The wikipedia article about the party is pretty interesting [1]. "The party has also been described as both right-wing populist and left-wing populist as well as left-conservative"
The party was founded after the founder was thrown out of the Left party for liking a far-left extremist group on Facebook and not backing down from that. Since then the party has evolved to also include goals traditionally attributed to the right, like large scale remigration and a stricter immigration policy.
The party also seems inconsequentially small, even at the municipal and regional level. They have 0 seats at the national level
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party
Great, I will definitely go out of my way to purchase their products.
Uncontrolled migration needs to stop.
What does that mean?
Nothing, it's just an empty platitude that can be used for justifying any kind of abhorrent act against "others".
It's why it's so effective as a rallying cry, it means nothing substantial, can be molded into whatever the speaker wants it to mean, it's an empty vessel for the bearer's hatred.
Welp, that vanishes my support for mullvad, despite I did recommended it to many of my friends who doesn’t want/can setup their own.
Im not against people having different political opinions, I personally agree with things from each side and disagree with them both too on other matters, plus having my own third option that doesn’t fit any side. But I am certainly against a company marketing itself as a “defender of personal and human rights and freedom”, yet they are sponsoring a party that obviously doesn’t hold these values, this company will report individuals in the future to deport them maybe, 5 years later they are reporting others for disagreeing with whatever agenda that party is having, it’s always a slippery slope, never think it will end at xyz and that will it.
Goddammit it’s like companies are ALWAYS destined to turn to evil one way or another, it’s just how long it will take is the question. It’s a reminder that you should always host your own, trust nobody, none.
Any suggestions for a VPN service with similar security standards as Mullvad?
Damn. Well, if that gets confirmed I'm going to get my company off mullvad.
It's confirmed. And the party in question is quite extreme, at least by Swedish standards.
According to polls[0] the party gets ~20% votes in their region. IMHO 20% of voters can't be "extreme" [0] https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/orebro/orebropartiet-nast-... (swedish)
The AfD is a far-right extremist party in Germany with currently 28% projected support[0].
[0] https://dawum.de/Bundestag/
> IMHO 20% of voters can't be "extreme"
Was the NSDAP "extreme"? They got 43.9%
They got 43.9% in what Wikipedia marks as "semi-free yet questionable election". Also more correct question IMHO would be "was the NSDAP extreme in 1933?" and the answer is probably "no as much as by today's standards".
What you're actually asking is whether people knew they were extreme. But this makes your overall point circular: we can't say a party is extreme if the majority of people don't call it screens.
They were definitely extreme by the standards of the time. Their aim was explicitly to completely revolutionise European politics, culture, religion.... everything. One comment I heard recent (on The Rest is History podcast, I think Tom Holland said it) they were the most radical movement in European history.
Their ideology implied at the very least getting rid of whole populations. They wanted to reset to an imagined ancient culture and rewrote history to justify it. Mostly imagined, anyway - Sparta was the one real example they looked to.
They were extreme by the standards of the time, but the Overton window at the time did go further to the extremes, so they were considered less extreme than they would be today.
previously discussed[flagged: 251 comments]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48687508
Thanks, we'll merge that thread hither.
Including a statement from the other founder.
This one's gone too.
Aren't far-right parties opposed to government control and censorship? Ideally a provider should be politically neutral, but I'm wondering if it's preferable to have one that is opposed to government control and censorship.
> Aren't far-right parties opposed to government control and censorship?
Not more consistently than other parties.
does it change your trust in the company?
For some people, the answer is obviously yes. For others, they'll judge Mullvad purely by its track record, audits, and technical design.
Honestly, you could say the same about the CEO of ANDURIL in the US - the Oculus guy...but he just cares about the US and wants to make money by making weapon systems etc.
Is he a bad person? Is he a patriot? Who knows, I ain't gonna play the ultimate judge game - but he did release a cool gameboy clone which is literally the closest I will ever get to his work... [1]
[1] https://modretro.com
It's not only about trust, but also about not wanting to give money to an entity that will pass it on to a political party you don't want to support.
Yes, not only trust but my willingness to contribute money towards his paycheck. I don't want my money to end up in far-right parties.
Look at Zuck and Musk. Their platforms are still used by millions. It's only "us" that care about the pedigree of our tech founders, most people couldn't care less.
I commend your correct use of “couldn’t care less”. It’s so rare to see people get this one right these days.
really? how would/did you see others use it?
they mean it's pretty common to see the less-correct "could care less"
I’d say entirely incorrect. It means exactly the opposite. I don’t buy the “it’s popular usage now so that makes it right” argument - it’s like saying 4 now equals 5 because more people use 4 to mean 5.
There has to be some reason that so many projects are started by right wing people. Something in their personality that makes them both RW and willing to start lots of projects.
I would argue that right-wing people are now the left-wing people from like 30-40 years ago.
Don't think so. When did left wing people want remigration?
Right wing thought patterns tend toward believing in oneself; predicating the worth of the individual on their objective behavior or output; valuing individual achievements; and also believing that effort is likely to result in those achievements.
Left wing thought patterns are biased toward less agency, e.g. the individual is a product of the system; systemic discrimination holds people back; one's trauma or neurodivergency is a valid anchor that makes achievements very difficult; failing to achieve is okay and doesn't reduce one's intrinsic value.
I'm aware that left wing patterns position individuals as moulded by systems but I'm not aware of any that explicitly deny the power of the individual to try weird stuff, especially in a low-barrier-to-entry industry like software. I guess maybe the overall level of that is somewhat lower and maybe low enough that it doesn't really happen?
In some ways I would say it could even increase trust: if the guy is a privacy absolutist, ultra-libertarian, "my business is not the state's business" type, his VPN products are likely to be pretty good.
On the other hand, he might have other strong right-wing views that users don't agree with, and which might take precedence in one's set of priorities. If I like football and they like football, but they also want to kill me because of <other reason>, I don't think I'd want to give them my money.
Wanted to mention the Analogue since ModRetro was mentioned.
https://www.analogue.co/products
https://www.analogue.co/editions
I think these look a lot cooler, though they're less hackable.
Such a convenient time frame with all think-of-the-children bs wave to point fingers at the one of the best VPN services our there with spotless reputation and raise a hysteria with duplicated stream of posts, isn't it?
Surely just a coincidence.
I am surprised that people are surprised, all these services are by people for people who are marginalized. Therefore, they are either far-right or far-left. When its business, its more likely to be a far-right since they are more business-oriented. The far left folks usually make a repo and give it away or try to organize some collective effort.
> for people who are marginalized. Therefore, they are either far-right or far-left.
There are many types of marginalised groups, and many other reasons to want to use VPNs. Putting everything on a left-right political axis seems more than a tad reductive.
Sure but far left and far right is a crude default way to generalize, the left folks will be especially annoyed by this but its still useful when the specifics don't matter.
The party in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party. Doesn't sound extremist far-right to me. Many of its positions would be considered center-left or even far left in much of the world.
"They will also be forced to leave, even if they are born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedish"
For all the stuff about free dentists this sounds pretty right wing to me.
Left/right doesn't matter much for a no-logs VPN.
Up/Down (authoritarian/libertarian) is what matters there.
If he has high allegiance to the extant power structure then promises should be questioned.
If he is for radical decentralization and antiwar then I'm more likely to trust promises made about privacy and autonomy.
Then there's international confusion about left/right. Scandinavia is known as a good place to run a business because businesses regulation is much lighter than places like the US which are heavily regulated. In the US business regulation is "left wing" in Scandinavia it's "right wing".
We'd use a 14-dimensional vector for political positioning if we wanted to be studious but most folks are just looking for a friend/enemy distinction. Even many of the comments here looking to dump a well-regarded service if either "tastes great" or "less filling" is confirmed. The false dialectic as means of control and all that jazz.
This is like the third duplicate I saw in a week
Discussed three days ago (251 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48687508
The other owner replied here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48696800
Why a shame? Is far right bad? Are far left good then? Genuine question, not a troll, because I keep hearing opposite things.
Both far-right and far-left are bad, and often in many ways actually quite close to each other.
When it is about paying money for a commercial service I think it is valid point to vote with your wallet. Otherwise if it was a free service, it would not really matter as the whole VPN provider industry is dubious and comes down to the same tech stack and outcome.
Aren’t Swedish political parties mostly publicly funded?
Parties get goverment funding based on election result, with a minimum floor of 2.5% votes in national elections. This party is way too small for that, and is primarily focused on local election.
If this is real I will stop my monthly subscriptions.
I use Mullvad because it physically prevents anyone from logging my data.
What a co-owner does with his personal money in a local Swedish municipal election has zero impact on the code protecting my traffic.
Did a quick research - calling a party that campaigns for a 30-hour work week and socialist dental care 'far-right' just because they have a strict immigration policy shows how carelessly people throw labels around these days.
Remigration is more than a strict immigration policy. And calling legal immigrants parasites is going too far.
How does it physically prevent Mullvad from logging your data?
They're known to run everything in RAM, nothing gets stored. You pull the plug and everything is gone.
Of course, you have to trust the company on that.
So nothing prevents them
By that logic, nothing prevents your ISP, your OS, or your hardware manufacturer from logging you either. Ultimate trust is an illusion in tech.
Correct and we know several of these parties do log you.
archive link? the post got deleted
They might be having some capacity issues, it was 404 for me for a while but now it's back.
Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20260629105534/https://det.socia...
thanks, i got to the actual article that was linked: https://web.archive.org/web/20260628170131mp_/https://www.fl...
Sigh, people that bring politics to the forefront with everything are so miserable.
Oh yes, sure, the party started by avowed Marxist Markus Allard is 'far-right'. For those who can read (or know how to translate) Swedish here's an article [1] on marxist.se - well-known hidey hole for far-right extremists - on how the expulsion of Markus Allard from the communist party (they call themselves 'the left party' but they're one of several communist parties in Sweden) is an 'attack on the left'.
Allard is a traditional leftie, someone who thinks in terms of class struggle and power to the people. He also happens to be rather outspoken about the failure of Swedish parties on all sides to handle the problems related to the excessive migration Sweden and Europe have been dealing with for the last few decades. This has put a target on his back for the everyone-I-don't-agree-with-is-Hitler crowd so his party is of course 'far-right'. Well, if that is what 'far-right' means it doesn't seem all that problematic so I wonder why people always complain so much about the claimed rise of the 'far-right'. See what that leads to, you obsessive labellers of those who dare to question the desired narrative? When everything is far-right the term has lost its meaning just as claims of 'racism' or '*-phobia' have lost theirs.
[1] https://marxist.se/uteslutningen-av-allard-en-attack-mot-van...
Swede here. That's not even close to accurate. Örebropartiet is not extremist, but I would absolutely label them radical populist left-economic-leaning nationalists. Please do some research and make up your own mind. They're a tiny local party active in Örebro municipality where their founder and leader loudly points out clearly wasteful use of government funds, or more or less corrupt decisions made by leading party figures in other parties on local matters. The party leader is known for ridiculing competing parties party members on debates.
Where the Örebropartiet (Örebro Party) usually are called extremist is in questions regarding immigration. They are of the opinion that people that move to Sweden should not integrate but also assimilate, and quickly, find a job. For some people, this might sound extreme, but I would argue that more than half of the Swedish population (and its parties) nowadays share this view, similar to how Japanese people and society broadly want people that move their to assimilate.
> similar to how Japanese people and society broadly want people that move their to assimilate
And it's super racist there too, I can assure you. My father in law is Korean but lived in Japan his whole life. There's no way to describe what he experienced except racism. People just hated him for being Korean.
I have no respect for people that concern troll about some vague cultural purity to disguise their prejudices.
A friend of mine who is a non Japanese Asian lived in Japan and when asked said there's no racism. There's mild cases but if you are careful to follow the customs and speak the language, you are generally accepted as a Japanese in daily life.
> A friend of mine who is a non Japanese Asian lived in Japan and when asked said there's no racism
Well I'm convinced.
:shrug: same back to you?
No, there's a fundamental difference between what we both wrote. There's a difference between saying "I know someone who has experienced racism" and "My friend says there's no racism in X country." One is a personal experience, the other invalidates the experiences of everyone else. They are not two sides of the same coin like you are implying. If you take the phrase "There is no racism in Japan" at face value, you are either pushing an agenda or falling for someone else's.
"We just want assimilation" is the palatable marketing term for "We would be fine arresting people at their immigration hearings if they are brown enough." Just look at the U.S.
Rewrite my comment to say "my friend experienced no racism". Not more than in his home country at least.
What you said is the same. One is according to what your relative said another is according to what my friend said.
I don't think it's crazy to expect assimilation. We are fascinated with different countries and cultures and we generally consider it's a good idea they exist and are different. Diversity is strength. But they can only be different if they have their own culture and traditions. Would everyone be so fascinated with Japan or Korea if it was not for their culture? Would they be the same without high trust society that is made possible by it?
> I don't think it's crazy to expect assimilation.
What's that mean to you? In my city, immigrants work, run businesses, pay taxes, have kids and send them to local schools, ride the bus, complain about the weather, practice their religion. I guess the only thing they don't do is complain as loudly about the government as (many of) the rest of us. What more could they be doing to assimilate?
Probably nothing. Looks good to me, they speak your language, have jobs (don't abuse welfare), pay taxes, live legally. Reading about the party it seemed that they want to kick out people far from what you described (which can be still wrong, idk, but I'm not sure it's so outrageous I would boycott a business over its owner's preference). If they campaign to kick out people who are like what you described then I would think harder.
One note: I didn't say anything about the language they speak, and what language other people speak is none of my business.
How do you know they complain about the weather, if they don't speak your language?
That is maybe the biggest fear mongering dogwhistle you've dropped so far.
That's a rhetorical example of a human, every day conversation someone might have.
The fact that you took it literally and express concern about its veracity is very revealing. I don't generally police what my neighbors talk about.
No, it's a reasonable question. Language is how 90% of communication happens. 如果我用中文說話，你根本聽不懂我在說什麼。只有聽得懂鄰居和社區裡的人在說什麼，我才會感到自在；如果聽不懂，我就不會有這種自在感。I've a significant chunk of my life in places where people don't speak my language and it's not a comfortable situation to be. Sure I have some anxieties but everyone does and if you say their feelings are invalid then I'm not sure which of us is more intolerant.
> Not more than in his home country at least
So in other words he did experience racism?
> I don't think it's crazy to expect assimilation
What qualifies as assimilation is completely up to the reader. To some people, it means holding a job (although I don't know of any white people that get deported for being laid off). For some, it means not committing crimes.
For many, it doesn't matter if you have a job or if you're even born here. There is no standard of assimilation you can meet if you are ethnically different enough. That is why, again, the U.S. is currently arresting people at their immigration hearings. This is what far right politicians really want, they don't give a fuck about assimilation.
> Would everyone be so fascinated with Japan or Korea if it was not for that culture and high trust society made possible by it
Buddy, come on. Most people I know are not fascinated by Japan, they are fascinated by a romanticized idea of Japan that has been filtered through Reddit posts and Anime. They cultivate a one-dimensional understanding of the country specifically so they can daydream about it. A lot of Americans that "love" Japan would lose all interest the second they were told they can't dump their trash outside.
> So in other words he did experience racism?
Not according to him.
> Most people I know are not fascinated by Japan, they are fascinated by a romanticized idea of Japan that has been filtered through Reddit posts and Anime
Somehow people I know who rave about Japan just don't watch anime that I know of. They just go there and like how everything is. The anime nerds I know don't talk about real Japan much.
If you don't have that fascination, fine. I was fascinated by tons of things there. I think most people were. And most people would say it's a horrible idea destroying that culture.
You are completely dodging the topic of assimilation. You are implying that Japan is great because it's culturally homogeneous, and the reason it's culturally homogeneous is because people assimilate, and therefore Sweden deporting teenagers is morally right because they are protecting their own culture from people that don't assimilate.
You have no specifics on how immigrants don't assimilate, and what part of the culture is worth preserving, or how you can even assimilate to a culture that is constantly developing. If I am ethnically Japanese and grow up in Japan, but I don't act like others, that is not a "lack of assimilation." That is me actively participating in a shift of the culture, and that's how everyone would see it. But if I were a different ethnicity in the same situation, I would be a problem immigrant anchor baby who is trying to destroy the culture of the country. Do you see the difference?
This idea that culture is able to be frozen in time and preserved is paradoxical. It's a cudgel used to bludgeon disadvantaged people who are perfectly functioning citizens, and even harm people who could make the country better, not worse. How do you expect immigrants to introduce new ideas to a culture if you elect politicians that will demonize and deport them if they are not sufficiently "assimilated"
> You have no specifics on how immigrants don't assimilate,
I haven't been to Sweden. I take the word of people who have been there or live there elsewhere in this thread.
But elsewhere I definitely have seen communities of immigrants which don't speak local language and treat local population as less than themselves because they are of different religion.
> If I am ethnically Japanese and grow up in Japan, but I don't act like others
Examples please.
Racism != rightism. It is even possible to be both Communist and racist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_Soviet_Union
Racism is one of those things that unfortunately crosses political and social boundaries. Some groups just hide it better than others by enforcing anti-racism as a group norm.
Racism definitely crosses all boundaries, but deporting people on the grounds they are not culturally aligned is what we'd call a positionally right policy. That does not mean left wing parties can't do it. It means it lies right on the political spectrum.
That's not a subjective opinion I made, that is just a textbook definition of what we consider authoritative right. Left and right mean things, and they don't mean what traditionally progressive or conservative parties happen to be doing at that time.
Left and right refers to where the Girondins and the Montagnards/Jacobins sat in the French revolutionary assembly. We’ve bastardized this into imaginary delineations of political positioning and for some reason we keep bolting on arbitrary positions as Girondin or Jacobin.
I don’t care what textbook you are looking at, I’m looking at (or maybe writing) a different one. Left and right do not actually “mean things” if you intend for “meaning” to be universally or even widely agreed upon. I suppose for you “meaning” may only be relevant if a certain group or class agrees upon the meaning, but the rest of us will continue to say and believe what we want!
You are being needlessly contradictory, in a pointlessly academic way. I can assure you nobody thinks of left or right as the French revolutionary assembly, any more than we think of "Wednesday" as the day of the Norse god Odin, or "a sandwich" as the Earl of Sandwich's gambling snack. The Etymological origin doesn't determine current meaning.
> but the rest of us will continue to say and believe what we want
Who is we? These definitions are mostly settled, and where they aren't, there are fuzzy differences, not huge gaps of disagreement. It's a shared language of understanding where people lie on a quadrant of politics. It's socially useful to have that language when posing political theory. Again, this does not mean political parties are permanently stuck to their quadrant. What do you think Republicans mean when they call themselves right wing? Nothing?
> I suppose for you “meaning” may only be relevant if a certain group or class agrees upon the meaning
What? You seem to be stuck on an idea that I am making some kind of partisan statement by saying a certain policy is left or right wing. That is not a value statement on whether it's good or bad. I don't know why you are so heated about this.
There is no shared language anymore, and I’m tired of pretending that there is. The 20th century notion of left and right, which was itself a fantasy, has been turned into a tool of propaganda. It does nothing but muddy the waters.
“Right-wing” politicians are arguing for nationalization in some cases and wielding industrial policy like they’re FDR. We may see price controls and even capital controls before long. The oil market interventions alone would make Stalin blush. Meanwhile they are jumping on regulation in other places, such as AI “safety”, and have floated hate speech bans (to combat antisemitism).
“Left-wing” pols (admittedly in the face of immense hate from their base) are coming out for free market solutions gently guided by the government and deregulation so we can build faster. Outside the US, you have bizarro world Labour policies in the UK (they seem to be aiming to absorb the Tories), China’s roaring Communist economy that’s the global hotbed of economic activity, etc.
The traditional categories still seem to hold in Latin America, for some reason. But that’s it.
What exactly does the left-right distraction provide except for an easily abused method for enforcing a (tenuous, completely malleable) group orthodoxy? These days it seems like people just use it as shorthand for “enemy”. Any heterodox position is automatically of the other wing, preventing adaptation to real-world circumstances. Some positions (like a land value tax) are somehow both left and right wing depending on who you ask. It’s infuriating.
You are taking me to say left means Democrat and right means Conservative, and acting like it's a gotcha when they criss cross. I already said all of this was possible.
> “Right-wing” politicians are arguing for nationalization in some cases and wielding industrial policy like they’re FDR
Nationalization is a policy lying on the left. State ownership of industry is the textbook left pole
> The oil market interventions alone would make Stalin blush
Price controls on markets are authoritarian left
> are coming out for free market solutions gently guided by the government and deregulation so we can build faster
Economic right, mildly libertarian
> What exactly does the left-right distraction provide except for an easily abused method for enforcing a (tenuous, completely malleable) group orthodoxy?
No, they provide categorization to resist group orthodoxy. People are going to categorize, that is human nature. Without these, the only way to categorize a policy is what the parties happen to be doing at the time. That causes a group orthodoxy. There are people describing themselves as "more left" or "more right" as a shorthand to reject group orthodoxy. There are people describing a policy as left or right, regardless of which party is doing it. You're not sparing anything by resisting policy categorization, you are making things less specific and more likely to default to broad buckets.
That doesn't mean you can't talk about the policies in specifics, it means they lie on a very flexible and descriptive map.
That isn’t at all useful. If a party adopts a few platform items that are “left” and some that are “right” (as all parties do), what good is it to point out that X party has adopted Y-wing stance on this issue? The only purpose that this could serve is to give ultras (left or right) ammunition to enforce orthodoxy to these “standard” categories. Meanwhile in the real world, as I mentioned, all parties and candidates adopt mixed platforms, and if you care at all about pragmatism and responding to real conditions, those positions should be evaluated individually on their merits rather than slapping on a left or right label.
This tendency to force everything into a black or white frame is what gives us politicians who run without platforms, on party label alone, and who then adopt unpopular or harmful positions when in office.
At some point we decided that platforms don’t matter, and if platforms exist, they must be orthodox. This is a problem!
All white nationalist parties describe themselves in these neutral terms, of course. I've yet to find a hardline anti-immigration party that is not also virulently racist.
Companies funding far-left parties seem to be much bigger problem.
Which companies fund Deutsche Wohnen Enteignen? Let me know so I can boycott them
Steven Schuurman (Elastic) has given millions to left parties in Germany and The Netherlands.
Which ones? What are their policies?
Did anyone actually look into the "far-right" party that this purports to be?
The Örebro Party (Swedish: Örebropartiet, ÖP) is a local populist political party in Örebro, Sweden, led by Markus Allard. It holds seats in the Örebro municipal and regional assemblies, focusing on local populist policies such as reducing politicians' salaries, stricter migration, and free dental care.
Sweden has undergone a horrible transformation in the last several years where gang warfare and especially bombings have skyrocketed. Most of the new gang violence in the last several years is from migrants from North Africa and the Middle East, after Sweden implemented a generous immigration policy.
https://nct-cbnw.com/an-explosion-a-day-in-sweden-what-is-go...
There's nothing to indicate that this party is "far right" at all. It's a populist-based party but the stance on immigration is definitely linearly correlated to the violence that was brought in by immigration. Lowering politicians' salaries and free dental care doesn't sound very far right to me.
Gosh, why do I not believe you, who is blaming black and brown immigrants (from multiple countries, even, as if they were coordinating) for violence
Your own link says,
"The defenders of Sweden’s once generous immigration policy will point out that, according to a report released in February 2024, 88% of the 14,000 people deemed to be active in criminal networks are Swedish citizens, and only 8% of these are dual citizens. 11% are non-citizens, and the remaining 1% was not known. An additional 48,000 people in Sweden were deemed to be linked to criminal networks, although not actively involved."
And it links to the report.
Did you think people wouldn't read it, or what? (Assuming you are not a bot, ofc. There seem to be a lot of them flooding every platform talking about this.)
The article you linked to also says:
"In an interview with SVT in January 2025, the Swedish Police’s Erik Lindblad said that they had seen an increase in what he termed “instrumental violence” where it is not people that are targeted but instead “fixed objects such as staircases and businesses”.
The reasons for the bombings are, in several cases, “suspected to be motivated by extortion against businesses or people linked to businesses and their families”, according to the Swedish authorities’ crisis information website. Mr. Lindblad also noted that the attacks can often be part of wider criminal conflicts, although these cases are often an exception to the rule, in their opinion.
Serious crime and the actors within those networks are often behind the attacks, according to Mr. Lindblad. “They use violence to get their way, irrespective of if it is revenge, or a battle over a drugs market, or extortion,” he said.
Thankfully, given that the explosions normally target doors, staircases, or businesses, the explosions do not always result in injuries and rarely kill people."
In any case, I do not actually care whether they are "far-right" or "far-left" or whateverthefuck. Left vs. Right is an infamously limited, binary horse-race way to talk about politics, one that groups disparate issues together arbitrarily. If you somehow convinced me they weren't fascist (though they are), I would not suddenly change my opinion of them just because the label changed.
The thing that actually matters is that they want to forcibly expel innocent people (including sending 2nd generation immigrants who were born and raised in Sweden to a country they have never lived in and have no connections to or familiarity with) from their homes en masse because it's convenient to blame them for all the nation's problems, based on zero evidence and maximum racism. There is no way to suggest something like this that is not monstrous.
Mullvad's mealy-mouthed defense of this is pathetic. There can be no tolerance for intolerance.
A headline and 20 comments and no mention of what this party actually stands for. Only simple labels such as "far-right". Ehh. The Republican Party in America is EXTREMELY far right by Swedish standards. So maybe one should base this on the actual substance rather than labels?
Additional context here is that they donated 75% of *all donations* to that party last year. 3x everyone else combined.
And that party is not just "kind of right wing", they believe in large scale "remigration" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remigration), which, to save you clicking the link, means "a far-right concept referring to the ethnic cleansing via mass deportation of non-white minority populations, especially immigrants and sometimes including native-born citizens, to their place of racial ancestry".
There is a wealth of difference between when random companies throw a few thousand at whatever the leading parties are, and this.
It's funny how remigration never involves sending white folk back to europe.
>ethnic cleansing via mass deportation
"ethnic cleansing" is an emotionally charged term that conjures genocide in the popular imagination. It is not a good descriptive term for what can rightly be described as regressive or ultra-nationalistic migration policy.
As economies shrink and jobs become scarce, we may reach pre-ww2 order.
The party in question seems to be an anti-immigration strongly secularist left wing party with Marxist roots. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party
I am not sure "far right" is an accurate label. Maybe populist? Its a mix that would probably get a lot of support in other European countries.
Huh, so they want free healthcare and also ethnic cleansing. That's a pretty strange combination.
Also they are anti EU and NATO. Lot of astroturfing here.
> Lot of astroturfing here.
The guidelines say "assume good faith"
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Those are left wing positions. Until 2023 the UK's Green Party's policy was to leave NATO, and there is still a lot of support in the part for that. When the UK's Labour party was socialist they were anti-EU. If you look at campaigned for what in the 1975 referendum on EEC membership its pretty clear: for example, Thatcher campaigned to remain, Tony Benn campaigned to leave. The remnants of the old left remain anti-EU even now.
They're neither wing. A foo-wing person could want to leave the EU because it's too bar-wing for any values of foo and bar.
its not uncommon. The overtly racist parties in the UK (e.g. the BNP has quite a lot of left wing policies (e.g. nationalisation of utilities), ending NHS outsourcing to the private sector, and free healthcare.
Its a combination that appeals to the worst off who compete with unskilled immigrants for jobs and rely on free healthcare etc.
It is a sensible combination to me. If you first believe that the government should provide a bunch of free stuff, but it doesn't at the moment because it's too expensive, it kind of makes sense that you would then think there need to be fewer people getting the free stuff so it remains affordable. The first people on the exclusion list would naturally be noncitizens.
You can exclude people you don't like from free healthcare without physically removing them from the country.
As it turns out you can't have strong socialist policies and also open borders.
Disgusting. You cannot trust a racist with your privacy.
[flagged]
OK, but please don't post low-substance comments on HN. Telling us you “don't care” about a topic achieves nothing other than instigating a generic tangent, which is against the guidelines. Please take a moment to read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them if you want to participate here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I used Mullvad before this because they passed a bunch of tests and legally denied claims to user data. I don’t have the reference but it was on HN.
So who do people recommend now?
Proton
Disappointing if true. I can't read the original article[1], but the translation seems to agree. I've paid for Mullvad for _years_. Looks like I'll be taking my money elsewhere.
[1]: https://www.flamman.se/techprofil-ger-miljoner-till-orebropa...
Article by a news media outlet that is considered very far left (communist). Try finding the same claim or description in any national Swedish media. You won't.
I have Mullvad to avoid age check gateways, not super anonymity. I'll absolutely be taking my business elsewhere.
Because of hyperbolic headlines?
I love how we pretend to live in a free democratic society where everyone is free to make up their own mind and vote for what they believe...
...as long as they don't have opinions that differ from ours, in that case we might punch em in the face...
And everyone is free to chose not to buy products from people who have opinions that differs fundamentally from their own?
And some opinions cannot be tolerated in a democratic society. An obvious example is anti-liberal/anti-democratic opinions as they threaten the system itself. You cannot have a free democratic society if a majority removes the freedoms of a minority.
You have freedom of speech to advocate for your politics. The rest of us have the freedom of association to not want to be involved with you in any way.
These are not contradictory - they are both essential freedoms.
For most people, the concern is the money, not the voting. People don't want wealthy people reshaping politics to fit their interests through their wealth. They can vote for whomever they want.
This sounds a bit irrational. Where does "wealthy" start? Mullvad co-CEO donated ~ $500K, would him donating $100K have the same effect? What about $10K? What if a Mullvad _employee_ donated $500K?
What about work in units of median annual household disposable income, which are at least somewhat responsive to the distribution of money?
What % do you think a reasonable voter should accept a person donating to a political campaign before it causes concern about the donor's influence vs the median household's voice?
Off the top of my head, I'd guess 500k USD is about 1000% / 10x median annual household disposable income in SE, which I think would give the median voter pause.
For what it's worth (my own view): I think about 10% (~5k USD) is obviously acceptable, and I expect most anyone would agree that donations at that level are fine. I think your proposed 1000% is obviously unacceptable, and I expect most people would agree with me on that as well.
I'm not sure exactly where the level is that opinion would flip, but I feel pretty confident about those boundaries.
A company shouldn't be able to fire an employee over their opinion,[0] so that wouldn't matter to me. For a major owner, the donation amount starts to matter to me around $5-10K, but YMMV.
[0] I suppose unless they have a very influential position and it's about a matter that contradicts main company goals
What if the employee's opinion is that the employee should murder the CEO?
Oh, come on. If you're trying to make a point, be more clear.
> "punch em in the face"
Very weird interpretation of "voluntarily choose to not continue supporting them financially"
Presumably you want everyone to be forcibly compelled to finance the political parties they disagree with? And you would define this as a democratic society?
Punishing a company because someone does something in their free time with their own money ....
The guy owns half the company, so a significant part of the money I'm paying is involved. Yes, it is quite ethical to decide based on matters like that. It's not an employee or minor shareholder.
Not doing business with a company (for any reason btw) is not 'punishment'. Nobody is taking away anything from the company or any people involved with that company.
That's how markets work. People have the right to choose to do business, or not, based on whatever criteria they value.
What's wrong with choosing who you give your money to?
Is that somehow undemocratic?
Is anyone censoring the guy?
> in that case we might punch em in the face
Nobody is calling for violence though?
In a free democratic society nobody is forced to do business with anybody they don't agree with, and free speech means they can talk about their decision without fearing repercussion.
So far in this thread you’re the only one mentioning punching anyone in the face.
The Nazis are sad that people want to punch them in the face.
https://knowyourmeme.com/sensitive/memes/richard-spencer-pun...
Surprised it took that long for a Godwin.
Haters will now say that the far right will destroy exactly that: "our" democracy. The Western morality is a joke, and many HN readers comment like an infant. I feel ashamed.
Everyone is free to make up their mind and vote for what they believe.
And if I disagree strongly enough then I am free to take my business elsewhere. Especially if the money I hand over might go to support speech and parties I fundamentally disagree with.
Freedom swings both ways, and freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from people thinking you're an asshole and not wanting anything to do with you. That's their freedom.
I'm still amused that so many people got brainwashed into thinking that VPNs give privacy :D
If my house isn't a fortress I should just leave my doors open :D
I'm so clever, everyone else is stupid
Nah. But for the supposed "privacy" you swap one "dumb pipe" for another pipe, which you have no clue about its operations beyond "trust me bro". Of course they may behave with good intentions and actually keep their promises but that's a rather huge IF.
And then quite often people will still use their regular tracking-browser to access tracking-websites xD
> The Örebro Party (Swedish: Örebropartiet, ÖP) is a political party in Sweden. The party was initially only a local party in Örebro, Sweden. Markus Allard is the party leader. According to Allard the party cannot be placed anywhere on the traditional left-right spectrum. Some of its key issues include lowered wages for politicians, ending the tax payer funding of various sculptures, monuments and art, large scale remigration, a stricter immigration policy, and free dental care.[3][4]
I see no problems
Any of the Swedes in here can corroborate the claims in the article about this right wing group? Especially about the extreme anti-immigration statements and put that in full translation and context?
Also what this group leader has done in Örebro to contextualize this quote
> ”I hope they will do similar things on the national level as in Örebro”, writes Daniel Berntsson to Flamman.
Tried to find something from the party itself, but found nothing on their homepage other than that they plan to publish a party programme "gradually, starting some time during the summer of 2026".
https://www.orebropartiet.se/var-politik/
The claims in the social media post is pure bullshit. The party is a tiny (read: one person elected) radical populist left-economic-leaning nationalists. They have gained popularity for pointing out wasteful use of Örebro's municipalities resources, and their leader's fondness of lengthy ridiculing other parties politicians in lengthy debates, that he often publish on Instagram and YouTube.
Thank you for providing context.
Are his public stances on immigration precisely stated as remigration, or does he describe a thing such as remigration without explicitly naming it as such?
About his quote from wikipedia "They will also be forced to leave, even if they are born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedish." which links to this video tweet https://x.com/AllardKlipp/status/2060109271635771457 can you give full context/translation?
He says what is quoted when talking about criminals with immigrant roots. "Those [criminals] - they should get out, even if they were born in Sweden, because they do not have a connection to Sweden. They received a swedish passport but they have not become swedish [as belonging to swedish culture]. They are not interested [in becoming swedish] and here I'm ready to go on corpses...". Overall his stance on immigration (taken from this video) is not as extreme as one can imagine reading HN comments. It is extreme but not to the extent that he's ready to push out anyone whos granddad was not Andersson.
It is an extreme point of view, it's just that far right is booming everywhere.
> read: one person elected
No, they have 8 people elected: 3 in the region, 5 in the municipality.
They got 4,46 % of the votes in the region, and 7,92 % in the municipality. And who knows, maybe they'll use that 5 million SEK to get more seats in this years election.
Far right? It's run by a literal marxist communist.
What does he or she want to do with immigrants?
Lol. Not all communists are Marxists on immigration
What did Marx write about immigration?
This is a bizarre thread.
People are surprised that a privacy-oriented businessman is right-wing is very strange.
"Millions" in the title is also misleading in this context - it's millions in Swedish Kronor, which is roughly $500K USD. A lot, but the title seems intentionally misleading.
I've also never really understood the cycle of boycotting things because you don't like how an individual spends their own money. Almost every company will employ people who have values you severely disagree with, and put money toward those causes. And turning to Proton as the alternative is... a choice?
What's going on? Proton faced a similar scandal recently. I think in their case sponsored a video by a far right vlogger. After that I saw people recommending Mullvad as an alternative.
Tweet from Proton's CEO last year: "10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned."
He repeatedly said his statement was politically neutral.
Please stop this high school cafeteria witch hunt bullshit. It's played out. Either use their stuff and support them or don't.
An important part of making "vote with your wallet" work is that people need an awareness of what their wallet is voting on. Telling people not to talk about problems with companies lets companies get away with way too much.
It's not a "witch hunt" to be against ethnic cleansing and not want to financially support that.
I've never really gotten the impression that Allard or the Örebro party support ethnic cleansing. What makes you say this? I'm not sure if any of their suggested policies would even be considered that controversial outside of Sweden.
I pay for and use Mullvad VPN. I believe they value everyone's privacy and I believe they are competent technologists.
I don't care about politics. I will continue to buy and use Mullvad VPN.
you value privacy, but you don't think privacy is a political topic? VPNs, encryption, and other privacy tools are regularly under attack or protected by legislation and policy that is actively debated and lobbied for.
I think that you do care about politics, you just don't care about this particular topic or policy. That's your prerogative of course, but don't pretend you are wholly above the fray. I suspect if a company's founder had donated millions to a party aiming to mandate backdoored encryption you would suddenly find yourself to be a very political person.
Agreed. I use mullvad because I believe they are the best off the shelf choice. If I stopped using things because of the owners opinions, then I'd live in a cave.