The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

https://det.social/@lostgen/116820546568940358

by Risse • 24 days ago

695 1067 24 days ago

basisword• 26 days ago

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.

bl4kers• 26 days ago

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.

mrtksn4• 26 days ago

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.

greggoB• 26 days ago

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.

mrtksn4• 26 days ago

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.

mortarion2• 26 days ago

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

whalesalad• 26 days ago

Wild. I spent about 3 months living in Örebro while on contract with a company based there.

gpm8• 26 days ago

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".

ShinyLeftPad8• 26 days ago

By your logic USSR was far right.

mortarion2• 26 days ago

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.

irthomasthomas3• 26 days ago

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"

iamnothere14• 26 days ago

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).

Saline9515• 26 days ago

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.

josefritzishere• 26 days ago

Seems more complicated than that, in reading the wiki.

ortusdux• 26 days ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

ktosobcy2• 26 days ago

I'm still amused that so many people got brainwashed into thinking that VPNs give privacy :D

gib4442• 26 days ago

If my house isn't a fortress I should just leave my doors open :D

I'm so clever, everyone else is stupid

ktosobcy2• 24 days ago

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

fsmedberg3• 26 days ago

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.

Capricorn24816• 26 days ago

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.

ShinyLeftPad8• 26 days ago

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.

iamnothere14• 26 days ago

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.

Aachen7• 23 days ago

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.

This sounds like you expect very few people to do this. I can't speak for others but this was exactly the first thing I did upon hearing about it, and

Where the Örebropartiet (Örebro Party) usually are called extremist is in questions regarding immigration.

is exactly the conclusion I came to, based on their statements about "parasites". Not the integration aspect indeed...

mhitza2• 26 days ago

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.

fsmedberg3• 26 days ago

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.

mhitza2• 26 days ago

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?

Pazzaz• 26 days ago

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.

ninjin2• 26 days ago

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/

elzbardico• 26 days ago

Now, the usual cry from blue sky spoiled rich kid fascists that are unable to understand that some people live in the real world, with real problems and because of that have ideas different from them.

jaykru• 26 days ago

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.

padjo3• 25 days ago

"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.

addedGone2• 23 days ago

What's wrong about it? You expect me to be a jap citizen if I just over-stay there and have my children born there?

Aachen7• 23 days ago

Where in the world is calling refugees parasites considered a neutral statement? Legit curious where this "much of the world" would be since I can't imagine this of an average person

freediddy• 26 days ago

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.

ar_lan• 26 days ago

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?

lightbulbish2• 26 days ago

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.

AlecSchueler4• 25 days ago

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?"

port118• 25 days ago

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.

ndsipa_pomu3• 25 days ago

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.

port118• 25 days ago

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.

hackinthebochs6• 25 days ago

Why is the burden always on the host nation and never the immigrants?

hagbard_c11• 23 days ago

I don't think it's reasonable to "demand" integration

Yes, it is reasonable to demand people who come into a country adapt to rules - written and to a certain extent also the unwritten, of which Sweden has many - of that country. When in Rome, act as the Romans. This adaptation will never be 100% but that is not the point, what is most important is that newcomers learn to assimilate to such a level that the natives are open and willing to maybe integrate some parts of the newcomer's culture.

People who 'are the last representatives of [their] culture' can write a book about it while becoming part of their new culture since it is clear that their old one did not stand the test of time. They're much better off that way instead of living like cultural fossils for the likes of NPR and PBS to make documentaries about. By all means document what that extinct culture had to offer but life is for the living and culture is the commonly agreed upon set of rules how to live it.

Multiculturalism is a pipe dream, something dreamt up by people who listened to one too many version of John Lennon's Imagine. It has been shown not to work time and time again, it makes it harder for people coming in to a new country to assimilate and integrate because there is no clear target to aim for. Culture is not a fixed thing, it evolves through time by adopting new things and getting rid of old customs. Multiculturalism does not call for cultural evolution, it calls for revolution: here's a whole new culture, now deal with it. Revolution hardly every works and when it does it tends to go badly for those on the wrong side of it.

throwa3562622• 23 days ago

I think it is very reasonable to demand _some_ integration: get a job, pay taxes, learn the language as best as you can, don't do crime.

But at the same time, you should not be expected to give up your culture (as long as it is not doing something against the law).

sensanaty2• 23 days ago

What should happen is that the existing cultures should be open and welcoming enough so that new-comers want to take part

I'm an immigrant to the EU/NL (naturalized, now a citizen), and I also lived in Sweden for a short stint. If Swedes are anything, they're open and welcoming, I'd even say too open and welcoming, which is part of why these issues keep cropping up.

Some context so I'm not immediately written off as ignorant or as carrying some kind of agenda: I grew up in Indonesia. My family is largely atheist, but we lived in Aceh (look up Qanun Aceh, it's Sharia law territory) and various other places around the country. I've been immersed in Islam, every sect of Christianity, Buddhism (I went to a Buddhist school as a kid), and Balinese Hinduism. I went to an international school with people from literally everywhere, and I'm still close with many of them, scattered across the globe as they now are. I say this to establish that I've actually lived among a wide range of people, cultures, and religions, this isn't an abstract opinion.

This isn't unique to EU immigrant communities either, I've seen the exact same pattern in Indonesia. Many (I want to stress: many, not most, but certainly too many) immigrant groups are remarkably insular and resist integrating in any meaningful way, even multiple generations in. They don't learn the language, don't adopt the host country's customs, and make essentially zero effort to become part of the society they live in. This gets worse where there's already a large existing community of the same background, those often calcify into enclaves where you're functionally not living in the host country at all anymore.

At a certain point, we also have to admit that some immigrants are the source of the problem.

Where I land is this: host countries should expect integration from long-term and permanent residents, and should actively support it via language access, civic education, real investment in helping people become part of the society they're settling into, rather than leaving newcomers to sort it out alone or quietly tolerating permanent parallel communities. What that integration looks like has to be specific to the country in question, because "host culture" isn't one universal template, integrating into Aceh's legal and religious framework is a very different thing from integrating into Sweden's secular, liberal one, and I'm not pretending otherwise.

But in both cases, multiculturalism shouldn't mean a one-way street where only the migrant's culture is expected to remain untouched and is treated as a holy thing while the host culture is expected to bend indefinitely until it, too, warps into something it never was. If you've chosen to build a life somewhere, the society you've moved to should welcome you in, but you should also be expected to actually become part of it. We shouldn't have to walk around on eggshells when we say that people should integrate, this should be the expectation for anyone looking to form a permanent life in a country they live in.

Refugees are a different case, since they didn't choose displacement, but even there once return is no longer realistic and a person has built a long-term life in the host country, the same logic on integration eventually applies to them as well even if the urgency and framing should differ from voluntary migration.

On a side note (and this is more of my own personal problem), I'd rather not see any kind of Sharia-like culture anywhere near me ever again, that crap is stone-age level bullshit that deserves to go extinct forever.

card_zero• 25 days ago

Don't we also get a dopamine release from empathy, or is it just no fun?

Matl• 23 days ago

Depends on if Atlas Shrugged is your Bible or not.

lightbulbish2• 23 days ago

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).

raffael_de2• 23 days ago

I not just agree ... I can't even fathom how one can not agree with your comment.

throwa3562622• 23 days ago

Would this change your mind?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48704714

Source

https://x.com/AllardKlipp/status/2060109271635771457

Aachen7• 23 days ago

Translated from Swedish Wikipedia [...] I think it is very reasonable

When I looked into this party when news broke a few days ago, I was surprised to find that the English article was comparatively longer and included the more appalling statements. Seems worrying that their narrative on the native version appears to be working

framapotari• 22 days ago

Inclusion means also including people with different beliefs and respecting their opinions, even if we don't share them.

Does this apply to immigrants?

kfreds44• 26 days ago

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.

actualwitch• 26 days ago

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.

jasonvorhe4• 23 days ago

It should be obvious that he's perfectly fine with your decision because he wrote exactly that in the post you just replied to.

kfreds44• 23 days ago

Of course. Sorry to hear you're leaving. Thank you for the compliment.

vrganj2• 25 days ago

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

kfreds44• 23 days ago

Hi! Thank you. Both Daniel and I are well aware of Karl Popper. We've both been interested in politics since we were teenagers.

kamaitachi• 25 days ago

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.

ciefa• 23 days ago

Where will you move to?

Are there any alternatives left?

For me, Proton isn't one.. not sure what else there is.

dgellow3• 23 days ago

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

nevon• 23 days ago

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.

kfreds44• 23 days ago

Hi. I get what you mean. I made that post with limited time. Sorry to hear you're leaving.

deaux13• 23 days ago

Hi Kamaitachi,

What you seem to be missing is that every single € you've spent on virtually anything in the past number of years, some of it has found its way to support organisations that have extreme racist views.

alexseman• 23 days ago

Thanks Fredrik, will actually be switching to Mullvad.

everfrustrated• 23 days ago

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.

mrhottakes• 23 days ago

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.

panarky3• 23 days ago

> 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.

neya• 23 days ago

"Rules for thee, but not for me"

Classic

jasonvorhe4• 23 days ago

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).

kfreds44• 23 days ago

Allow me to provide some nuance.

I cannot speak for Daniel. I know there are some policies he likes and there are things he doesn’t like. Personally I am not a fan.

This morning Daniel explained his rationale to most of the company. Speaking for myself, I don’t like that he made this donation and I know this view is shared by many of my colleagues. Speaking as the co-CEO of Mullvad, we will continue to protect the universal right to privacy. People should feel safe using Mullvad regardless of their political affiliation.

dreambuffer• 23 days ago

Why does it say your comment was made 2 days ago, when the thread has only been up for 6 hours?

burkaman• 23 days ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48721560

mellosouls• 23 days ago

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.

antonvs• 23 days ago

PR companies have found that getting ahead of controversies is useful, so they invented time travel.

dang12• 23 days ago

See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48721551 and let us know if you have any questions.

(aftbit already mentioned this link downthread but perhaps it's helpful to say this explicitly.)

Edit: actually I should probably pin that to the top. Done now. Sorry for the confusion!

BitWiseVibe• 23 days ago

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.

gpm8• 23 days ago

that supports freedom ... for everyone

Unless you happen to be of Somalian descent in Sweden. Then you should be ripped away from the only home you've ever known, indeed possibly the only country you've ever been in, and sent to a foreign country you have no citizenship in, where you have no home, don't understand the language, know no one, and be forced to try and survive.

kfreds44• 23 days ago

Thank you!

honr• 23 days ago

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.

kgwxd2• 23 days ago

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.

jasonvorhe4• 23 days ago

Everyone has their own definition of a bad actor. The fact that you're implying to know how to spot them says a lot about your tolerance for differences in opinion.

peterfirefly15• 23 days ago

There ARE bad actors, they must be kept out.

There are very good (and well-documented) reasons to believe a large part of the recently immigrated foreigners in Sweden are exactly such bad actors.

Your arguments don't really work the way you seem to think they do.

Pr0ject217• 23 days ago

Thanks for supporting civil liberties.

miyoji5• 23 days ago

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.

fastball6• 23 days ago

How do you figure?

dijit14• 23 days ago

Is IKEA fascist? Because the founder was a Nazi supporter; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingvar_Kamprad

I'm not saying this to dunk on IKEA, but sometimes even when there's a sole founder, the mission of the company and the mission of the person who founded it do not necessarily align.

EDIT: It also seems that the party is extremely left leaning but is anti-immigration, as a person who lives in Swedens third largest city (which is predominantly non-Swedish, like myself: I am also an immigrant) I can understand Swedes desire to minimise this, it's not a "far-right" topic anymore.

myrmidon5• 23 days ago

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.

epistasis2• 23 days ago

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.

JuniperMesos6• 23 days ago

Do you think any of the people publicly claiming that they will no longer do business with Mullvad because Daniel Berntsson donates to an anti-immigration political party, wouldn't make donating to that party an illegal, jail-able legal offense if they had the political power to do so?

crossroadsguy• 23 days ago

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.

WhitneyLand• 23 days ago

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.

kfreds44• 23 days ago

I'm sorry to hear that. I'm not defending his choice, but consider reading Daniel's rationale in the Flamman article. There's also his blog [1], which explains some of his views. I know he doesn't share all of Örebropartiets views, but I should let him provide that nuance.

As I said in another comment, speaking for myself, I don’t like that he made this donation and I know this view is shared by many of my colleagues.

[1] https://dberntsson.info

handedness2• 23 days ago

If it were a small amount of money, it wouldn’t be an issue.

I'm not speaking for or against anyone's views for or against anything here, but it's worth noting that Brendan Eich's $1K donation caused quite the stir.

ouraf• 23 days ago

If you bought the product, the money went to the company. You don't need to take personal responsibility beyond that, and the company isn't doing the thing you hate so much. By the same token that "some of your money might end up (after many twists and turns) empowering politics you find repugnant", a much bigger share of this money is paying for the food on the table of the employees, their families and their children.

How many people unrelated with your personal gripe, people that were doing a good job since you were paying and satisfied customer, are you willing to punish in order to "send a message"?

This is an impossible standard to live by and demand from everything you buy and every service you pay for. Doubly so if you need to announce to the world you're dropping a product because of something that isn't done by or responsibility of its employees.

vr46• 23 days ago

I am so so disappointed with Mullvad and this founder. I can’t believe I let myself get suckered and then paid up-front for the year again.

The only influence I have is with my money.

hnben• 23 days ago

I am sympathetic to the sentiment, but the argument does not hold water.

the fact remains some of my money can end up empowering politics I find repugnant

are you paying taxes? are you using gasoline? are you paying for amazon?

Some ratio of your money will always go toward something you hate. The big question is: is for a mulvad subscription that ratio bigger than for the alternative? The next question is: how is the ratio for things you like?

copper-float• 21 days ago

No offense, but you're being so dramatic for no reason. You're not that important, and it doesn't matter what you believe. Your comment just reeks of smugness and immaturity.

tamimio2• 23 days ago

It’s time to create nullvad, Fredrik.

wanderer2323• 23 days ago

Thank you for supporting the civil liberties and individual freedom of expression!

kfreds44• 23 days ago

Thank you. :)

ryan_n• 23 days ago

It should be obvious that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission

Why should this be obvious? I don't think that's obvious at all. The owner of a company could very easily decide to one day use their company to further their political beliefs/ideologies (see: Twitter, FaceBook, etc..). Why would Mullvad be any different?

kfreds44• 23 days ago

I'm sorry to hear you'll be leaving us.

To answer your question, we started building this organization in the summer of 2008 for idealistic reasons, and we are still idealists who think privacy is fundamental to a civilized society.

The best strategy for achieving societal impact through entrepreneurship is consistent, long-term, and value-based ownership. For us, this disqualifies taking outside investment, either through venture capital or going public. Mullvad has instead been growing organically without outside investments.

Our principles have withstood the test of time. Our conviction has remained unchanged through multiple serious offers of acquisition and outside investment. Words are cheap of course, but consistent action over the course of almost two decades is not.

Mullvad is about privacy. Neither Daniel nor I have used Mullvad's brand to promote our personal opinions.

vitally36432• 23 days ago

That's great and all but can I have a refund for the portion of my mullvad subscription that went to supporting organizations who think that people like me don't deserve to live?

dijit14• 23 days ago

Can you point to the charter where the Örebro party ever said that you don't deserve to live?

The embellishments of what people actually believe is extremely exhausting.

FWIW, I'm an immigrant in Sweden and if they gained power I would be affected, but we talk about people with differing views to us as if they're actively violent in order to shut down conversation.

This catasphrophising language will eventually not help your cause, because ordinary people start to feel numb to it and the hard-right will not be defeated by it.

krig• 23 days ago

[flagged]

dang12• 23 days ago

You can't post like this here, no matter how wrong someone else is or you feel they are.

You may not owe founders whose cofounders you feel are behaving badly better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.

If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.

microgpt30• 23 days ago

Fredrik, can we expect you to start a new company with the same values without the bullshit?

dom96• 23 days ago

As a customer I can no longer support you.

But as someone that has been in a similar situation to you, I understand it's tough to end up building something big with someone who's politics you do not agree with. I would seriously urge you to consider building something new that rejects this kind of politics explicitly.

kfreds44• 23 days ago

I'm sorry to hear that.

Oh, I definitely agree with some of his political opinions, the obvious ones being around free speech, free press, and privacy.

There are important issues where we don't agree. His values around empathy stretch to most sentient beings, and he believes I commit torture when I eat fish for lunch. And he's still willing to associate with me.

insane_dreamer2• 23 days ago

What you said makes sense, but what the founders do matters. I'll never buy a Tesla car because of Elon's actions. I cancelled my Amazon Prime subscription because of Bezos' actions.

There are plenty of people for whom it doesn't matter, but for some it does.

kfreds44• 23 days ago

Indeed. It matters to me. In fact, most of my political opinions have atrophied, or rather I have self-censored. Daniel believes that is not the right trade-off to make in this case. I understand his point of view, and disagree.

gustavus• 23 days ago

For whatever it's worth I use Mullvad because it lets me pay in Bitcoin is super easy to re-up and is super anonymous.

I don't really give a darn who you voted for or what your founder did. I like the product I'll keep using it.

iAMkenough5• 23 days ago

Do you happen to drive a Tesla?

iAMkenough5• 23 days ago

You may try to unsuccessfully hold this distinction, but at the end of the day money that I give to your company ends up being used by far-right politicians to oppose Mullvad's supposed mission.

simio• 23 days ago

This response completely fails to address what is the issue for me and many others, and frankly I find it quite offensive. The Örebro Party uses racist and transphobic rhetoric and dog whistles, and openly advocates for ethnic cleansing. Their political actions have already hurt people I care about. Berntsson's donation is explicitly meant to support the party in bringing their politics to the national level. This would bring material harm to me, to family and friends, and to many others.

And Berntsson's ability to fund ÖP in doing that harm is directly linked to the financial success of Mullvad. Whether you or Mullvad agrees or disagrees with Berntsson or ÖP is irrelevant. Thanks to Berntsson, more money to Mullvad means more harm to us. So why on Earth would I pay you anything?! On the contrary, it would quite obviously be in our best interests if Mullvad fails as a company, if possible to such an extent that Berntsson is ruined financially and can no longer fund "nationalist socialist" parties such as ÖP.

It just doesn't matter whether Mullvad believes in free speech or not, not when Berntsson is making it so that giving you money causes us to be persecuted and harmed. And to be perfectly honest, I find your framing of this as "philosophical" to be profoundly appalling, and it tells me that you do not at all understand what is actually going on.

kfreds44• 23 days ago

I'm sorry to hear that. Since writing that response I've added plenty more to this thread.

khriss4• 23 days ago

Fredrik, thank you for a clear and honest statement of Mullvad's position rather than corporate word salad.

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.
That said, if you no longer want to be a Mullvad customer for philosophical reasons, we think it's important to honor that

Combining the above statements, would you have any recommendations on VPN providers for people who choose to leave Mullvad? As you will agree, anonymity and privacy are under attack the world over and even people who leave Mullvad deserve have access to tools enabling the same.

The VPN space is a cesspool of shady operators who seem to spend more on marketing than technology and it's really hard even for the HN audience to know which providers are legit. This is where your background and experience are really valuable, so any recommendations would be very welcome.

Yes, I am aware that the ask here is to endorse a competitor, however if someone has made up their mind to leave Mullvad, they are going to do so anyway. Enabling them to do so while retaining their anonymity and privacy will go a long way in advancing the political aims Mullvad stands for.

kfreds44• 23 days ago

Hi! No worries. I haven't spoken with Nick Pestell of IVPN in ages, but he's always struck me as genuine and empathetic. We met the first time at RightsCon in 2018 I believe. TunnelBear and ExpressVPN were also there. We all wrote this thing together: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2018/10/17/signals-trustworthy-v...

Since those conversations I've always thought that IVPN is closest aligned with Mullvad's values. Again, I haven't spoken with Nick in ages, so I don't know what IVPN is doing now.

jwildeboer• 23 days ago

FTR. The reports I have seen have always made it clear that Mullvad has two owners/founders/CEOs. And while the donations may be private, they obviously come from money earned as part of being one of the founder/owner/CEO of Mullvad and thus raises questions on corporate responsibility.

RIMR• 23 days ago

Being in a tolerant and intellectually open environment is also liberating and promotes truth seeking

I agree 100%, which is why the dehumanizing intolerance of the Mullvad CEO completely disqualifies your organization from being on the same side as that statement.

JuniperMesos6• 23 days ago

I'm a long-time Mullvad customer, and I respect what the company has been doing and the pro-privacy political stance it openly and publicly stands for.

I agree that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission, and shouldn't be.

But what I do care about, strongly, is that Mullvad as a company doesn't bow to pressure from pro-immigration activists who are attempting to impose social and financial consequences on people and institutions like Mullvad that tolerate anti-immigration political speech. Which is of course why people are publicizing this donation and publicly stating that they will no longer do business with Mullvad because of it.

I want to state publicly that what would make me no longer do business with Mullvad is if Mullvad, organizationally, attempted to pressure Daniel Berntsson into not donating to anti-immigration political parties because it induces pro-immigration activists to attempt to boycott the company. I don't want to live in a world where people trying to run a pro-privacy VPN feel pressure to police anti-immigration speech unrelated to the core mission among people in their organization, and that's the principle that my customer dollars are riding on.

kfreds44• 23 days ago

I'm a long-time Mullvad customer, and I respect what the company has been doing and the pro-privacy political stance it openly and publicly stands for.

Thank you.

gpm8• 23 days ago

The speech people are objecting to isn't anti-immgiration. It is pro crimes against humanity against people who previously immigrated, and their descendants.

A stance that Sweden should reduce the amount of immigration they accept would be utterly unremarkable and never result in outrage like this.

bigyabai5• 23 days ago

Which is of course why people are publicizing this donation and publicly stating that they will no longer do business with Mullvad because of it.

But you're doing the same thing, making the same threat. You've only escalated it from a conscientious protest to a Mexican stand off.

I'm not icked-out by immigration discussion, but I am concerned by business owners starting down a political path. VPNs are not a very glamorous segment of the industry, and Mullvad had carved out a niche in taking a neutral side and fostering trust through a transparent product. My former boss spoke well of them and visited their sites in-person after hearing the marketing line about their RAM-only VPNs. Their appeal was not in protecting politicized speech, but protecting all speech and defending it as an apolitical technological imperative.

Now more than ever, it's hard for me to believe their brand identity. You're allowed to have political opinions, voice them and vote for them when you're a CEO. But spending your paycheck on inordinate political investments is how you ask for a boycott. It's how I would feel about any political investment that their CEOs make, and its already tarnished the Mullvad brand for me.

bingoMen3• 22 days ago

pro-immigration activists

literally translated, “humans with empathy”

applfanboysbgon2• 23 days ago

We also live these values by being tolerant in our daily work.
The more people do this, the better a place the world will be.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

The more people tolerate the far right, the worse the world will be because they will take your good faith and use it to extinguish tolerance for anyone but themselves. This is literally textbook. I don't know how you can invoke the word tolerance without understanding this.

gib4442• 23 days ago

A lot of the far right is using anger about too much tolerance of intolerant religions brought into a country via immigration

Oh what a complex web this business of tolerance is...

zombot• 23 days ago

We fight for freedom of speech, freedom of information and the right to privacy.

OK, but the far right, like all totalitarians, has an agenda that is thoroughly opposed to this. That leads to the tolerance paradox: You must be intolerant to agendas that would put an end to tolerance.

mlrtime5• 23 days ago

Well said, You have a new paying customer from me and I will advocate for others to use Mullvad.

Going to sign up now through the tailscale partnership.

nonplus• 22 days ago

Obviously there are not easy solutions here. Has Mullvad considered offering to buy out Daniel's shares?

The mission statement that Mullvad has promised it's users does (did) come with a duty of care.

In my eyes that mission statement is compromised, it either dies here and Mullvad is just another product financing political parties by proxy, or something is done.

I hope you find a way to protect Mullvad from actions that are counter to your mission statements.

cookiengineer• 22 days ago

As a counter argument to your marketing fluff comment:

Name a single instance of right wing parties that did not violate all human rights the second they got in power. Name one, I dare you.

And no, historically such a fairytale world does not exist that you're trying to paint here. All right wing parties feed off aggression, painting humans as enemies, and populistic lies. It's always been this way, always will be this way.

Not a Mullvard customer anymore, and going to never recommend you again for any person that asks me in the future.

Go to history class if you still can't see the truth in my comment. I'm German, and that's our fucked up history, and our messed up ancestry of people "that just followed orders" that I have zero tolerance for. Your fairytale comment reads like the "Hitler just wants peace" protests during WW2.

There is always a democratic and peaceful option, and right wing parties never choose that option. It's unsystematic to how they fundamentally work.

eieiyo• 22 days ago

Of course sir, just like the chancellor of Germany's time on the board of Blackrock doesn't have anything to do with his full commitment to doing what's best for the German people as chancellor. I think it would be crazy to suggest otherwise.

Politics and the company you own somehow having to do with each other and influencing each other? Preposterous. Wouldn't happen!

pgug• 22 days ago

I am really frustrated about that donation. I am an LGBT person, and I fear that a service I have paid for for many years will found someone who wants all my human rights gone. That I am supporting someone who just wants me to stop existing. I am not sure what VPN provider I could use that is even half as trustworthy as mullvad and I am not sure what to do.

FlyingCapybara• 21 days ago

Whatever what you say and so, it doesn't change the fact a part of my money is going to end up in an absolutely disgusting political party and other potentially terrible stuff. After so many years, I'm done with Mullvad.

sourcecodeplz2• 24 days ago

archive link? the post got deleted

Risse2• 24 days ago

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...

sourcecodeplz2• 24 days ago

thanks, i got to the actual article that was linked: https://web.archive.org/web/20260628170131mp_/https://www.fl...

cryo324• 24 days ago

Well guess I won’t be renewing my subscription this month then.

Any other verified sources?

Risse2• 24 days ago

Somewhat of a verification, here's Mullvad's response to the post on Mastodon: https://mastodon.online/@mullvadnet/116822244689326681

cryo324• 24 days ago

Thanks. Also fuck.

ethbr1• 23 days ago

(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.

microgpt30• 24 days ago

Will you be creating a VPN?

cryo324• 23 days ago

Yes. With blackjack and hookers.

pseudalopex2• 23 days ago

The other founder made a comment on another HN submission.[1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48696800

orliesaurus3• 24 days ago

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

echelon• 24 days ago

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.

hootz4• 24 days ago

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.

exitb• 24 days ago

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.

pluc3• 24 days ago

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.

microgpt30• 23 days ago

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.

loloquwowndueo4• 23 days ago

I commend your correct use of “couldn’t care less”. It’s so rare to see people get this one right these days.

toyg• 24 days ago

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.

mrtksn4• 24 days ago

previously discussed[flagged: 251 comments]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48687508

pluc3• 24 days ago

This one's gone too.

gpvos5• 24 days ago

Including a statement from the other founder.

dang12• 23 days ago

Thanks, we'll merge that thread hither.

lompad• 24 days ago

Damn. Well, if that gets confirmed I'm going to get my company off mullvad.

amarant• 24 days ago

It's confirmed. And the party in question is quite extreme, at least by Swedish standards.

yaris7• 24 days ago

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)

Gud• 24 days ago

They are not “extreme”.

thendrill2• 24 days ago

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...

misnome• 24 days ago

"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?

thendrill2• 24 days ago

Punishing a company because someone does something in their free time with their own money ....

grim_io• 24 days ago

What's wrong with choosing who you give your money to?

Is that somehow undemocratic?

Is anyone censoring the guy?

calcifer• 24 days ago

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.

yde_java• 24 days ago

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.

loloquwowndueo4• 24 days ago

So far in this thread you’re the only one mentioning punching anyone in the face.

colinhb2• 24 days ago

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.

yaris7• 24 days ago

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?

flohofwoe5• 24 days ago

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.

bobusumisu• 24 days ago

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.

Nursie• 23 days ago

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.

unsupp0rted2• 24 days ago

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.

leokennis2• 24 days ago

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]?

yaris7• 24 days ago

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?

iamnothere14• 24 days ago

Next iteration of this smear article: “Mullvad is basically HitlerVPN”

belorn8• 23 days ago

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?

dlgeek• 23 days ago

He's not just the CEO, he's a co-owner... Meaning that the profits from the business acrue to him... and therefore enable this party.

So, it's a question of "am I ok paying for this service, knowing that a portion of that money will flow to this political party and how do I feel about the results of that funding?"

sunaookami• 23 days ago

How do you feel about providing value to Hacker News, a plattform made by Y Combinator funding several startups, many of them destroying our society and benefiting from mass surveillance? You can do this argument with every company.

drngdds2• 23 days ago

You are responsible for the consequences of your actions

icase• 23 days ago

holy shit a sane person

all this “cancel mullvad!” nonsense is 2020 cringe all over again

eckesicle• 24 days ago

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.

lukewarm707• 24 days ago

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

hootz4• 24 days ago

There are some things that I won't ever defend your right of saying them, to be honest.

teekert2• 24 days ago

Agree. This is more of a "ST Voyager 'Nothing Human'"-case.

qtk8• 23 days ago

But does this swedish Party say any things like that?

teekert2• 24 days ago

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.

jzb3• 24 days ago

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.”

dijit14• 23 days ago

but if Mullvad did that to you, you would (rightly) be angry. Hence the irony.

yw34102• 23 days ago

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.

devindotcom5• 23 days ago

brave! but fortunately you are safe because no one is challenging his right to say it.

sph5• 23 days ago

I wish there were more people like you in the world. Have a great day.

asdewqqwer2• 22 days ago

People always conflate this statement. Only government can take "right" from people. Just opposing people don't make them lose their right. Otherwise it is taking away the right to say against what you say.

pluc3• 24 days ago

Their stance seems to be "people can do things on their own personal time":

https://mastodon.online/@mullvadnet/116822244689326681

cryo324• 24 days ago

And we can choose not to fund those things.

stefanfisk2• 24 days ago

To be fair, Örebropartiet can also be called an extreme left party. It’s complicated…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party

hootz4• 24 days ago

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.

wongarsu3• 24 days ago

They are very pro education. But that's basically the only thing, all the other answers are enthusiastic right wing answers

dtj11232• 23 days ago

Maybe the issue is that mapping political ideologies onto a 1-D line doesn't work if you have more than two distinct ideologies.

catheter2• 24 days ago

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.

flohofwoe5• 24 days ago

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'.

graemep3• 23 days ago

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...

flohofwoe5• 24 days ago

Sounds like the logical evolution of left/right-populism into 'absolutist-populism' ;)

mrtksn4• 24 days ago

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.

Sammi• 24 days ago

Horseshoe Theory strikes again:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory

belorn8• 23 days ago

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.

KaiserPro6• 23 days ago

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.

epistasis2• 23 days ago

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.

throwawaypath10• 23 days ago

The point is, they want to round up lawful citizens and turf them out of the country

The US isn't the only country in the world. Sweden does not have birthright citizenship. Many (most?) of those to be remigrated are not Swedish citizens.

distracted_boy3• 23 days ago

That's not at all what they want. It's comments like yours that create unnecessary controversy, based on nothing but lies.

tumetab12• 23 days ago

Most people agree that immigration over X% amount is undesirable.

Many governments ignored people's will for many years.

Some new political parties want to fix that, is reasonable enough.

stefanfisk2• 23 days ago

I matters because a lot of people will only read the headline and then get a skewed view of the political landscape.

I did not post my comment to defend him or the party. All I wanted was for people to understand the situation a bit better than they would by just reading the title and post content.

rdos• 24 days ago

[flagged]

tomhow• 23 days ago

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

decide1000• 24 days ago

If this is real I will stop my monthly subscriptions.

hypeatei• 24 days ago

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

graemep3• 24 days ago

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.

easytiger2• 24 days ago

Far right? It's run by a literal marxist communist.

microgpt30• 23 days ago

What does he or she want to do with immigrants?

easytiger2• 23 days ago

Lol. Not all communists are Marxists on immigration

rightbyte2• 23 days ago

People change. Mossulini was a socialist in his youth.

peterfirefly15• 23 days ago

And then he became a Socialist with power. Seems to me he remained a Socialist.

steinvakt2• 24 days ago

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?

msk2k• 24 days ago

Companies funding far-left parties seem to be much bigger problem.

microgpt30• 23 days ago

Which companies fund Deutsche Wohnen Enteignen? Let me know so I can boycott them

artisinal• 23 days ago

Steven Schuurman (Elastic) has given millions to left parties in Germany and The Netherlands.

wongarsu3• 24 days ago

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

gpvos5• 24 days ago

"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.

kfreds44• 23 days ago

I'm sorry to hear that. Yes, Daniel and I own 50% each.

obviously Berntsson has every right to his opinions and to express them

Indeed.

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

That is exactly the case.

but in the end I just don't want my money supporting anti-people causes.

As is your right. Daniel made his choice and now you make yours, as a number of other people in this thread has done. Some believe this party is left-wing, others right-wing. Some approve of it, others don't. Personally I don't, and as I've said elsewhere in this thread I wish he hadn't donated. As do many of our colleagues. To be fair though, there are also colleagues who do seem to approve. And then there are those who don't seem to care either way.

Still, I'm glad you recognize the possibility that Daniel and I are able to keep our personal opinions separate from the mission of our company. This is something we live in our daily work as well. As a workplace I'm glad we're not a monoculture of 100% like-minded individuals.

SpaceNoodled• 23 days ago

Ironically, remigration is a means to achieve a monoculture.

square_usual• 23 days ago

As a workplace I'm glad we're not a monoculture of 100% like-minded individuals.

But if you're tolerant of someone in your workplace that wants to make it a monoculture, and then succeeds in doing so, will you remain glad?

LocutusOfBorges• 23 days ago

Some believe this party is left-wing, others right-wing. Some approve of it, others don't.

For a company that puts political principle so fundamentally at the core of its marketing strategy, it's astonishing to see this kind of stance being taken.

The man who owns half the company seemingly choosing to funnel his share of its profits to a political party that advocates the mass deportation of people is, in that context, something with significant consequences.

I understand how awkward the position you're in must be, but it's obscene to present this as somehow being a thing that one can be morally neutral on. In the context of rising fascism across the continent, it's dismaying to see a company that a lot of us rely on so decisively pick the worst possible side.

chinathrow• 23 days ago

Time for a new VPN co then, right?

gpvos5• 23 days ago

I would like to add one note: if I were an activist in Iran, or in any other way my livelihood would depend on strong privacy services, I might keep using your service and even be (slightly) more certain of the company's resolve to keep my privacy protected. Although I would be very aware of the irony. But choosing for one's own safety can override other concerns. Very few things in life are black and white.

e402• 23 days ago

Who sees the party as left wing? Its seems like a disingenuous argument to make.

jlokier• 23 days ago

the possibility that Daniel and I are able to keep our personal opinions separate from the mission of our company

This isn't about opinions. Very large political financing is not a mere opinion. It has a much larger material effect.

I don't think it's possible to separate "mission of our company" from "large scale political financing", for purely structural reasons.

I think the legal and fiduciary concept of Conflict of Interest is relevant here, but perhaps only by analogy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest is quite informative.

In some business, political and legal roles, we deem certain structural relations to be a conflict of interest regardless of what people on those roles actually do..

The mere potential for excessive improper influence arising from the structure of their relationships and roles is what creates the deemed conflict.

As the owners of a company making substantial profit like Mullvad, you always had the potential capability to financially influence political outcomes on a scale which most your customers cannot, in ways that may seriously harm some of your customers and to be potentially against the stated mission of your company.

I think the relationship between running a company with an openly advertised public mission, or even an implied mission in the minds of customers, while in another role (wealthy private citizen) being able to make a substantial material action against the same mission, should be recognised as inherently a conflict of interest. But obviously it's one we can't avoid, as long as we allow people to get rich from a mission-driven company.

What we can do, is recognise that if someone actually takes a large material action against the company's mission, then they have gone a step further and demonstrated the conflict of interest.

We generally favour free speech, including political donations. But when the money for very large political financing comes mostly from customers who, by virtue of the advertising and marketing of the company's mission, are led to believe they are supporting the company's mission?

In my view, at that point the customers are being tricked into paying for something while their money is paying for something else which opposes the thing they thought they were funding.

At the least, it should be dealt with in a similar way that conflicts of interest are dealt with when, for example, directing multiple companies: By making sure everyone knows, so other people are able to consent or not on the major conflict issues those other people might have a view on. The analogy for customers is their consent shown by their informed decision to become or remain customers.

In Mullvad's situation, that would mean Mullvad should explain to customers, embedded clearly within it's public marketing of the company missions and values, that one of its current major owners receiving customer funds by way of profit, is the main financier of a political party which sponsors remigration in Sweden. Because that is clearly a thing some customers care about when evaluating whether to pay for Mullvad's services from now on. You know that, I know that, so there's no legitimate excuse for not letting customers who would care know.

Then, as you said, customers will be free to choose.

prmoustache• 23 days ago

The thing is, you can't be pro freedom of speech and pro privacy yet support right wing extremists. They are totally against that.

It can only means that Daniel is setting up a trap with Mullvad.

aarjaneiro• 23 days ago

Is your buddy incapable of speaking on his own behalf? Im sure he's aware of the reputational damage he's caused your company by now...

HDBaseT2• 23 days ago

Lets remember for a second that Mullvad has enabled people on all side of the political spectrum to communicate online, anonymously. This is more noble than almost anything else. Mullvad has enabled freedom for yourself, and millions of others, regardless of their political or personal leans.

Parae4• 23 days ago

Let's find another tool that enables the same, while not doating money to a racist political party.

gigatexal• 24 days ago

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?

andrewinardeer• 23 days ago

Proton

pyuser5832• 24 days ago

Aren’t Swedish political parties mostly publicly funded?

belorn8• 23 days ago

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.

pyuser5832• 23 days ago

Ok so it’s basically a political startup.

It sounds like once the party gets actual influence, its real funding will be determined by the Swedish people.

Doesn’t this make the situation less harmful, or at least fundamentally different from say Elon Musk?

pu_pe• 24 days ago

Any suggestions for a VPN service with similar security standards as Mullvad?

PunchyHamster• 24 days ago

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

raffael_de2• 23 days ago

me neither ... Mullvad is fantastic.

yaris7• 24 days ago

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."

piva00• 24 days ago

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?

yaris7• 23 days ago

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

jzb3• 23 days ago

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.

teddyh3• 23 days ago

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?

aoshifo2• 23 days ago

What are you trying to say with this? This is absurd.

The outrage has nothing to do with Mullvad itself supporting people with certain opinions or not.

The problem I and many others have, is that if the founder takes our money and gives it to causes that I (edit: or rather we) find reprehensible, we don't want to give them our money anymore. Simple as that.

I will not try to stop you from using Mullvad by any other means than my arguments. Hopefully you understand now where we are coming from and agree. If not, just do your thing.

solid_fuel4• 23 days ago

It's almost like there's a difference between selling services to someone and directly donating to a political party.

iAMkenough5• 23 days ago

When it comes to publishing anti-human, genocidal rhetoric, I hope they would say "we don't want your blood money."

Flipping that back around, I'm glad I'm not a Mullvad customer that would say "I'm okay with a portion of the money I give you being used to call for genocide."

bill_mcgonigle• 24 days ago

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.

mattrighetti4• 24 days ago

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.

microgpt30• 23 days ago

How does it physically prevent Mullvad from logging your data?

mattrighetti4• 23 days ago

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.

nout2• 23 days ago

One option is to use Obscura, so then you at least spread the trust to two parties (one of which is Mullvad). Not great, but better.

ailun2• 23 days ago

Remigration is more than a strict immigration policy. And calling legal immigrants parasites is going too far.

peterfirefly15• 23 days ago

Why? It is perfectly possible to be a legal immigrant and a parasite. It's even possible to be a completely homegrown native and a parasite. Wouldn't you call essentially all career criminals parasites?

henior• 23 days ago

This is like the third duplicate I saw in a week

Molitor5901• 23 days ago

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.

pseudalopex2• 23 days ago

Aren't far-right parties opposed to government control and censorship?

Not more consistently than other parties.

lmc• 23 days ago

Aren't far-right parties opposed to government control and censorship?

They say they are, but their behaviour once they get into power suggests otherwise.

Shortness8• 23 days ago

Some commentary here: https://korben.info/en/mullvad-cofounder-funding-far-right.h...

Daniel Berntsson is still involved with Mullvad and part-owns Mullvad's parent company with his co-founder.

reassess_blind3• 23 days ago

That article calls the party far-right, which for US based readers will imply they have the same ideology and policies as the US “far-right” concepts.

Is that actually the case? I’m not familiar with this party, and it’s difficult to get a grasp on whether they are Nazi-level pure evil, or an otherwise reasonable party with stricter views on immigration policy.

devindotcom5• 23 days ago

I understand Mullvad has historically been a leader in privacy among the big VPN options. What are some other equally affordable and user friendly options that you all have been satisfied with? Think for someone who saw Mullvad advertised during the Super Bowl but looking to leave because of this news.

cassianoleal• 23 days ago

I've been quite satisfied with AirVPN [0].

[0] https://airvpn.org/

khriss4• 23 days ago

+1 on AirVPN. They are amongst the handful of companies which successfully resisted the war on torrenting (targeting VPNs that allowed persistent ports) and still allow for port reservation.

Mullvad, like most other VPNs gave in in the end and removed port reservations.

leumon• 23 days ago

ivpn

Insanity2• 23 days ago

I haven’t used Mullvad, so can’t say how it compares to ProtonVPN but I’m happy with Proton.

It is super easy to set up, even on Linux and iOS devices.

newtonianrules2• 23 days ago

Does Proton keep logs? I’ve heard good things.

sudonem4• 23 days ago

It’s worth noting that Proton’s CEO is also known to be a supporter of right-wing causes.

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. I keep along the effort, but it just continues to be impossible.

Tistron• 23 days ago

I've used both, and for me mullvad has worked a lot better. They seem more focused on VPN as core to what they do and don't leak data when reconnecting to a different server, and with proton I often experience that my connection stops working if my laptop gas been closed for some time, and the only way to make it work again is to reconnect to a new server. And then it leaks connections for a few seconds.

elorant• 23 days ago

Do they have a CLI?

wasfgwp• 23 days ago

By any chance are you using any Apple products and are you a supporter of Donald Trump? Because if the answer is yes and no singling out Mullvad seems be rather hypocritical?

Based on his actions Tim Apple openly is an ardent supporter of Trump. So effectively everyone here who has a MacBook was supporting a company run by by a pro MAGA ceo...

Of course greed and corruption might be considered a mitigating factor by some people (instead of seemingly doing it purely due to one's personal convictions and without any coercion which is presumably the case here

notahacker• 23 days ago

Without wishing to defend Tim Cook at all, there is a difference between a corporation donating to an incumbent government that seems unusually receptive to bribes (including to be left alone) and an individual CEO being the main financial backer of a local fringe far right party he wants to make a national force, presumably because of his enthusiastic support for their policies which include the 'remigration' of citizens deemed excessively brown...

the_gastropod• 23 days ago

You’re doing the “we should improve society somewhat” meme guy thing. People are allowed to do better without being perfect.

solid_fuel4• 23 days ago

What is the general consensus on NordVPN? They are frequent sponsors on youtube but I haven't heard much substantial about them either way.

netsharc2• 23 days ago

I think they're relying on the fact that "Nord" sounds like "Nordic", so consumers think "they must be a Swedish company, I hear some Swedish techies are hardcore on freedom, e.g. the PirateBay is Swedish!".

In reality they're based in Panama, and their parent company is Dutch: https://support.nordvpn.com/hc/en-us/articles/19441152966161...

spockz2• 23 days ago

Is it so hard to imagine that someone willing to take such a principled stance on privacy that they start a company to provide a privacy focused vpn company that they also hold other extreme views?

It takes a certain kind of personality to become a founder especially more do for such a strongly principled company and adhere to it.

distracted_boy3• 23 days ago

This comment reminds me of Sweden < 2015, where any critique of immigration labeled you as a supporter of the Swedish Democrats (SD) and possibly a Nazi.

bigyabai5• 23 days ago

Mullvad's principle was that they protected speech. It wasn't a political imperative, and they enjoyed business from all sides of the political aisle perusing this product.

Now the apolitical appeal is fading. It's not hard to understand why VPNs, one of the most commodified businesses on the internet, struggle to find customers without that kind of niche reputation that Mullvad once had.

rwyinuse5• 23 days ago

What counts as an "extreme view" is relative. If my country had seen such a surge in gang violence as Sweden has, I too would support mass deportations of migrants with a criminal record, and much harsher migration policy. It's not that extreme of a stance considering how bad the situation has got in Sweden. I don't want to live in a society where teenagers are regularly hired as hitmen and shootings & explosions are a weekly, if not daily thing.

olelele4• 23 days ago

For real tho, I think the current crime wave has more to do with power struggles in the drug market than anything else.

Sweden has had terrible integration policies coupled w segregating all immigrants in the suburbs.

The drug consumption of everyday Swedes is fueling the crime wave. Cocaine consumption is at an all time high. The former prime ministers son was caught w coke at home. But only the marginalized are penalized for it and forced to work supplying the rich inner city kids who get off the hook..

cedws• 23 days ago

Can it really be called "extreme" anymore? Europe is swinging strongly towards being anti-migration at the moment. Other parts of the world like Japan are also going through such swings. Many countries never opened their borders to begin with. This political party sounds like it's closer to the average than people would like to admit.

bigyabai5• 23 days ago

They're so populist, in fact, that they require CEOs to donate them millions of dollars to constitute the backbone of their party. Oh wait, that's what political interest groups do.

spockz2• 22 days ago

I was mostly going by the “far-right” classification in the title. If indeed the whole spectrum has switched it will be less extreme when viewed from within the spectrum.

tekla• 23 days ago

Already had this topic discussed several times this week.

arjie2• 23 days ago

I wonder, if you model political positions as nations, whether trading benefits you all or whether autarky leads to long term relevance.

jubilee33• 23 days ago

Mullvad has always been a bit suspect with regard to their settings or lack their of, however what are you trying to insinuate? That founders are not political? That one "wing" of some hypothetical bird is in some way disconnected from its mirror wing? Regardless making something such as a VPN is and has been commoditiezed in current year to such an extent that whatever may be your motives, you can only do good by encouraging the userbase to not pay for said services.

TZubiri2• 23 days ago

The mechanism of VPN is pooling together many users and making them indistinguishable to the outside, providing plausible deniability. Outsiders can see a user belongs to the pool, but they can't tell if they are 'good' or 'bad'.

It's a similar mechanism that cryptocurrency, or money laundering uses. It's very possible for 'good' users to be recruited into the pool for no other reason than to provide plausible deniability for the 'bad' members. If I wanted to run an ilegal operation like cybercrime or drugs, I would probably use a VPN and a crypto pool, and try to get legitimate users to desire using VPNs for reasons like gaming latency, or avoiding taxes on 1K/month income.

It's well known that Mullvad provides lower than market prices when compared to competitors, and that they offer stricter no logs policies. Yeah, maybe they are providing a basic privacy right, or maybe they are providing shelter for criminals. Tradeoff old as time. But with prices possibly being subsidized, it makes sense that their incentive model is not to collect fees for usage, but to provide a wide enough user pool such that the anonimity is more effective.

What's interesting is that both far-right free-market anarchist users and far-left Not for profit Free Software socialists appear to be shocked that their anonimity pools contains them both. Kind of like how the lights went up at the club at 6 am and you realize who you've been smooching in the dark.

culi7• 23 days ago

far-right free-market anarchist

There's no such thing as rightwing anarchism. In the entire history of anarchism, it's always been a strictly and explicitly leftwing movement.

TZubiri2• 23 days ago

I know what type of anarchism you are referring to, spray paint a circled A, live in a farm, free love anarchy.

but what about free market capitalism, anarcho capitalism, the austrian economic school, the chicago boys, Milton Friedman, Javier Milei..

jeffbee• 23 days ago

You're ignoring the other main economic foundation of VPNs: the service is in fact run by the cops, at a loss.

drbscl3• 23 days ago

Wikipedia of the party in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party#

Doesn't really sound all that far-right to me. Nationalist, sure.

I'm not Swedish though, so I would be interested in the thoughts of those who are actually affected by Örebropartiet's policies.

ZeroGravitas2• 23 days ago

Spot the odd one out:

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.

threetonesun• 23 days ago

We want everyone here to be exactly like us, but we do recognize we have bad teeth.

nitnelave• 23 days ago

For context, from wiki:

Remigration is a far-right concept referring to ethnic cleansing via mass deportation of non-white minority populations [...] to their place of racial ancestry

KaiserPro6• 23 days ago

large scale remigration

which is literally kicking out people who don't look or sounds like me, out of the country.

Whenever that has happened it has been rather bad for most parties.

dijit14• 23 days ago

To understand why there might be a desire to limit spending on art;

There was a recent case where city of Malmo was building a hospital; during the building of the hospital it was decided that a splice of the oldest tree in the world would be installed.

A very expensive life-support system was developed and an enormous amount of money paid for the splice. (not including the life support system, which was also an inordinate amount).

The tree didn't take, and needs to be replaced.

It's called "Spruce Time": https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/skane/region-skane-har-lag...

guerrilla2• 23 days ago

Nationalist, sure.

That's pretty far-right by itself. The fact that they want mass deportations should solidify it for you though.

drbscl3• 23 days ago

It's definitely possible to be a left-wing nationalist

0xbadcafebee• 23 days ago

"The party has also been described as both right-wing populist and left-wing populist as well as left-conservative."

Well that clears things up

dgellow3• 23 days ago

The horseshoe still going strong

DaSHacka2• 23 days ago

Lol, that quote really reads like "we have terminal direction-brain and can't place these people in our arbitrary categories"

onraglanroad2• 23 days ago

Fascists always incude left wing policies to try to appeal to the "working man".

There's a reason the Nazis included "socialist" in their name. It's not because they give a crap about the plebs.

yreg3• 23 days ago

Doesn't really sound all that far-right to me.

To me too, then I got to the leaders quote on TV: "We must deport these damn parasites who sit and live at our expense."

Yeah, okay. I know some politicians who speak like that, I feel I get the picture.

Auracle10• 23 days ago

I think you'd be surprised at how quickly that sentiment has moved from the far-right to close to the center. People are (rightly, in my opinion) pretty upset at their governments for letting mass migration happen with pretty much only downsides for their actual citizens. People are all about the idea of helping the downtrodden when it's just an ideal, but when they realize it's having negative consequences for them that can easily change.

fsmedberg3• 23 days ago

I think it’s quite important to understand in what context that have been said. The ”parasites” are immigrants that have not integrated, entire families and generations living off welfare and the ethnic group basically have a super high unemployment rate of maybe 50% or more.

I’ve listened a lot to talks from the party leader of Örebropartiet, and while I think he would benefit from slowing himself down, yell and insult less, I really can’t see he being racist or far-right. More leftist actually. I think he’s simply VERY motivated/obsessed around questions like to get government less corrupt, much more efficient governence, and to stop major ethnic groups from very poor parts of the world get an unreasonable high amount of the governments welfare spending.

something7654783• 23 days ago

Funny, I usually hear that sentiment from left wing sources complaining about billionaires.

xdennis3• 23 days ago

To me too, then I got to the leaders quote on TV: "We must deport these damn parasites who sit and live at our expense."

Firstly, you should probably cite that. Searching for it leads here. Hopefully, you didn't manufacture it.

But, while the language is unfortunate, do you really think natives should tolerate migrants who are not a net positive?

cucumber3732842• 23 days ago

Maybe he was talking about beltway bandits, do they have those in Sweden?

zarzavat• 23 days ago

You have to consider the context which is that Sweden does have an awful lot of fake refugees mixed in with the real refugees. "Parasite" is harsh but unfortunately all too accurate for some of the migrants who are essentially gaming a system intended for people in real distress.

tim3333• 23 days ago

It's funny that reading the Wikipedia has they have:

"class-conscious populism" which according to party leader Markus Allard takes inspiration from marxist ideology

which would have been called far left not long ago. Still I guess "far-right" means anti immigrant these days?

projektfu2• 23 days ago

Interesting for a European party to choose red and black as colors and be right of center.

tokai• 23 days ago

Not without precedent. Maybe they are big fans of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

GuinansEyebrows3• 23 days ago

i can think of one notable right-of-center European party that featured those colors heavily.

tastyface2• 23 days ago

It's not an accident.

Aachen7• 23 days ago

I suppose how extreme a party seems to a person depends on the context they're in

jimbokun2• 23 days ago

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.

Limiting immigration along with generous government benefits for citizens is an interesting new space for political parties not fitting the traditional left right axis.

mullingitover• 23 days ago

It’s not a new idea. I’d put it at around ninety years old.

gnoll_of_gozag• 23 days ago

just "stricter policy" is an understatement. they want mass expulsions

exiguus2• 23 days ago

In my understanding its far-right or right-wing and definitely a populist party. See also the Ideology Section from the link you added.

victorbjorklund• 23 days ago

They are a really strange party revolving around their leader who got a personality. It can be seen more as Trump where ideology isn’t as important as what the leader says.

culi7• 23 days ago

The Örebro Party (Örebropartiet) split from the socialist Left Party in 2014.

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.

While Allard has described himself as a Communist, and a Marxist, at its founding in March 2014 he defined the Örebro Party as "broad left". At that time the party considered itself a "local party that wants to carry on the labour movement's ideals", and "not interested in administrating the current society".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party

rvz2• 23 days ago

Still waiting to cancel Big Tech for donating to Trump [0] and they donated more than a million+.

So why haven't we cancelled Big Tech yet?

[0] https://www.commoncause.org/articles/big-tech-is-donating-mi...

drcongo• 21 days ago

I wonder if it's because "we" are not an amorphous hive mind thinking face emoji

rvz2• 17 days ago

Or maybe most of the "we" here do not care to do it. (Because they pay your bills)

daneel_w2• 23 days ago

To the people using Mullvad I have two sincere and unpopular questions: do you actively scrutinize and examine the key people of every service and product you use, or is it just a reflexive change of footing whenever you happen upon news like this? Also, do you really switch, or is it just a heat of moment kind of thing and an opportunity to profess yourself?

bix62• 23 days ago

If alternatives exist some of us are willing to make changes to not support the worst of the worst when their behavior is revealed.

I used to like Musk, now I see Tesla and am disgusted. Maybe he was always like this but the personal line for me was the salutes. I’m sure many others have lines as well.

daneel_w2• 23 days ago

How do you know the political party of the story is "the worst of the worst"? You don't.

fzeroracer2• 23 days ago

Generally speaking, if the mission of a company is privacy and then the actions of the c-suite or founders indicates that they are more than willing to compromise on that, then yes. Why shouldnt you scrutinize people whose product is not aligned with their goals?

And yes I do actively switch products. I left the Windows ecosystem for Linux and I will leave Mullvad for whatever else pops up. So it goes.

nananana9• 23 days ago

do you actively scrutinize and examine the key people of every service and product you use

No.

is it just a reflexive change of footing whenever you happen upon news like this

Yes.

do you really switch

Yes.

What is the implication here? That because I did not know that a percentage of the money I give a company went towards supporting a party whose I that I find disgusting, I should keep supporting them now that I do know?

tencentshill• 23 days ago

It gives me an excuse to really examine why I started using their product or service and take the time to research alternatives. If the alternative is better, great. If not, what am I willing to lose? Money, convenience, reliability? These are questions you don't want a happy paying customer asking.

corford• 23 days ago

do you actively scrutinize and examine the key people of every service and product you use

Yes

or it just a reflexive change of footing whenever you happen upon news like this?

No (only when my personal screening didn't already flag it)

do you really switch

Yes, where it's feasible

dnlzro4• 23 days ago

Yes, where it's feasible

I think that's what a lot of people in this thread are missing. There are alternatives to Mullvad, so it's pretty easy to take your money elsewhere if you're unhappy with where it's being spent right now.

The counter-reaction to the reaction is so dumb. If you think it's silly to boycott a company because of a co-founders political donations, fine. But it's just as silly to try to argue people into not boycotting. Live and let live.

have_faith2• 23 days ago

There's nothing wrong with acting on new information as and when it surfaces in your life without obsessively staying up to date with every entity you engage with. That's the reasonable, pragmatic approach to trying to do the right thing without overwhelming yourself with the burden of being perfect.

It's not a gotcha if you're inconsistent from an outsiders perspective, we're all doing the best we can with what little insight we have into reality.

deaux13• 23 days ago

There's nothing wrong with acting on new information as and when it surfaces in your life without obsessively staying up to date with every entity you engage with.

So you're saying the majority of the people here who say they're leaving Mullvad, have:

1. Not heard of Bezos' funding of the Trump family, or don't use Amazon at all 2. Not heard of Zuckerberg/Meta's [insert countless despicable things here], or don't have Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp installed at all 3. Not heard of OpenAIs free pass on the Trump administration using their models for war purposes without limitations, or don't use OpenAI at all 4. And so forth?

Clearly, no. Because it has nothing to do with coming across information without obsessively staying up to date with every entity. The same people have come across much of the above information, yet continue not to act on it, despite most of them being magnitudes worse than this case.

carlosjobim2• 23 days ago

When it's about boycotting a product like Bud Light or Mullvad, there are so many equal offers from competitors that it isn't difficult to boycott and switch to another product.

Maybe companies in those kind of markets will simply bite the bullet and start marketing their products as for one side or for the other in politics instead of trying to be for everybody. Then they can lock-in strong goodwill from "their side", and stand on more certain footing. Or maybe most customers do not care as much as online activists.

tumetab12• 23 days ago

You expect to discuss ideas with a mob? :)

It's like the meme of nuclear energy help with climate change and the answer is "I don't want to solutions, I want to abolish capitalism!"

dang12• 23 days ago

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 very detailed.

I've merged the other threads into this one, so you'll see some anachronistic timestamps below.

sph5• 23 days ago

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.

dang12• 23 days ago

What has been removed? The links I saw didn't have much information but as far as I can tell they're still up.

From an HN point of view the idea is to give the discussion a place, since the community obviously wants to have it.

irthomasthomas3• 23 days ago

The comment from the other Mullvad founder is here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48696800

modeless2• 23 days ago

I don't think "appetite to discuss" should be a justification to override the guidelines against political submissions and discussion. There is far too much politics on HN and it leaks into unrelated discussions too. There are plenty of other places to discuss politics on the internet.

microgpt30• 23 days ago

Well the title already says most of it, doesn't it?

I'm also surprised. Usually opinions opposing the far right are removed from HN.

dmantis• 23 days ago

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.

deaux13• 23 days ago

Sad that I had to scroll down so far to see someone pointing this out. This is the least organic comment section I've ever seen on HN. Also very convenient that the manner of moderation has kept this on the front page for most of 3 days, quite unheard of.

seethishat• 23 days ago

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.

deejaaymac• 23 days ago

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.

devindotcom5• 23 days ago

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.

yunnpp• 23 days ago

And what does that have to do with the guy leaning right? He runs a VPN. If you care about privacy, that should be sufficient to support it, his other opinions aside.

himata4113• 23 days ago

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

hagbard_c11• 23 days ago

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...

dsign• 23 days ago

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.

mjburgess2• 23 days ago

What's the relationship between race and immigration status?

It's not entirely clear what the argument which unites them is supposed to be. This unification is always in the mind of the white matry not the person opposing immigration. In the UK polish immigration was opposed, en mass, poles are white.

SUPPOSE there are large numbers of poorly assimilated people in a country, whose culture of origin is very different than that of the host country. What does the minor coincidence of their common lack of european ancestry show, other than to prove the point, they lack such ancestry?

White skin evolved in europe, with the peoples of europe, as with european culture -- that whiteness tracks this culture is a conincidence. (There's less-and-less european diaspora in america -- which, if imported en mass, might also enrange europeans).

The refusal to treat large scale immigration as a cultural and economic phenomneon, to try and insult opponents of this position with a slander of racism -- this tactic doesnt work any more.

All you are doing is driving those people to say, "OK, so its racism. We'll vote for that then." And the result is real racists are elected.

Do you have any analysis of the issues people opposed to large scale immigartion, from non-western cultures, and who would reverse at least some of it -- do you have any arguments that engage the issues they actually raise?

throwawayqqq116• 23 days ago

The refusal to treat large scale immigration as a cultural and economic phenomneon
and insult opponents of this position as racist

On the other hand, you treat the negative effects of current immigrant milieus as eternal and innert to their ancestry (dare to say: genes).

This way, you can look at integration as if it has to happen in a single generation and also, allows you to ignore the more important part of diminishing social mobility, which effects the natives as much.

Look at germany, where after WW2, alot of turkish "guest workers" were invited and stayed. After several generations the descendant of those immigrants are as german as you can be. They are still soft muslims, drink alcohol, engage with german bureaucracy, have a heavy turkish accent -- some of them are even candidates for the far right AfD. Please note, they migrated into an economic boom.

Isnt that utterly ridiculous? When time proves you wrong, it reveals your narrow mindedness.

And when you reduce immigrants to percieved negative innert properties, isnt that racist? When you broaden your scope, youll see the bigger problems are elsewhere, dont get distracted by bigotted populists, that are as clueless about problems or their solutions.

iamnothere14• 23 days ago

It is strange, because this party’s platform seems to mirror the positions of the blackest Swede I know (Malcolm Kyeyune, a Marxist writer who is also often accused of being a right-winger). I suspect that the divisions in Sweden are much deeper than race.

earthnail• 23 days ago

I lived in Stockholm for seven years. One of the biggest mistakes was not buying a boat. They‘re not as expensive as people make you believe; you can get a really nice day cruiser for around $10k, which you can sell again for $9k after a few years. Used boats have very little depreciation. Yes, you can go fancier; a nice weekender like a Nimbus 250 sets you back $60-70k, but that’s just like cars. You can get an Audi or BMW, or you start with a Kia.

The problem with boats isn’t that they’re expensive - the Stockholm archipelago can largely be considered like a lake, not like the sea. It’s education. And I don’t mean university.

I mean: which boat is appropriate? How do I navigate? On which cliffs can I stop, and how? How do I prepare for a nice day out? Which insurance do I choose, which parts need repair and when, what Mai tweets must I do myself vs pay someone, how much should I expect in upkeep costs, etc

These are all very manageable things to learn, but if you’re not used and not exposed to boat culture you won’t do it.

But the problem isn’t money. $10k isn’t free, but it’s less than most used cars, and annual upkeep is less than a car, too.

jamesblonde• 23 days ago

It took me 5 years to get the boat - a 22ft daycruiser with toilet. That was 15 years ago, haven't looked back. Got a daycruiser from the UK. Drove there, bought a trailer there, drove it home. Arbitrage during the financial crisis - half the price of the same boat in Sweden at the time.

rwyinuse5• 23 days ago

Sweden wasn't like USA until politicians decided to make Sweden a "humanitarian superpower" by establishing the most liberal refugee policy in the world, without thinking of how they can actually integrate and offer a better future for all those refugees. I guess the real motivation may have been getting cheap labor, rest of the society be damned.

In any case, Sweden's policies on humanitarian migration have been an utter failure, and I can't really blame Swedes for wanting to make it stricter. Obviously refugees are not the ones to be blamed here, but politicians who took in more than they could successfully integrate.

bjelkeman-again• 23 days ago

a vast archipelago, out of reach for anybody who can't afford a boat

No. That is just false. There is a very well developed ferry/commuter boat network. [1] The cost on some lines are included in the Stockholm public transport pass. A five day ticket is €12/day. No need to buy a boat.

[1] https://images.ctfassets.net/4l7cjdaypzcu/UrqsczDUUVXP3wS6rU...

optionalsquid• 23 days ago

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.

Do you have a source for that? I tried searching, but didn't find anything supporting this notion. I can find numerous sources pointing to the high prevalence of blonde hair in Sweden and other Nordic counties, but the US rarely even makes an appearance in those rankings. If anything, it seems like a point of difference rather than a similarity

throwawaypath10• 23 days ago

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.

There are no similarities at play here. Swedes are the native, indigenous people to Sweden. "White people" in the US are not native nor indigenous to the US.

josh2600• 23 days ago

Only if you pretend the Sami's don't exist, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%A1mi_people

duncangh• 23 days ago

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

srik2• 23 days ago

I doubt they’ll go beyond the currently bundled Safari iCloud Private Relay, which I quite appreciate actually.

VortexLain• 23 days ago

And which they disable in any country with significant internet censorship, where having a VPN actually matters.

honeybadger1• 23 days ago

Sigh, people that bring politics to the forefront with everything are so miserable.

tamimio2• 23 days ago

Welp, that vanishes my support for mullvad, despite I did recommend 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’s 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.

kfreds44• 23 days ago

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

No. Daniel made this donation privately. I own and lead the company too. Both I and several of my colleagues don't like that Daniel made this donation. You are misrepresenting the facts.

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’s it.

You can choose to believe that, but it doesn't make it true.

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.

I'm sorry you hold this world-view.

aleda145• 23 days ago

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

hnarn• 23 days ago

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.

khurs• 23 days ago

A big question I suppose is what Mozilla are going to do in reaction?

As Mozilla VPN is white labelled Mulvad I think

subarctic• 23 days ago

They already ousted their own ceo over a political contribution so I'd imagine they'd do something here too, sadly

pipes• 23 days ago

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.

anukin2• 23 days ago

It’s a far left party based on what I read online. Their only right wing stance seems to be on immigration

OrvalWintermute• 23 days ago

Seems to be intentionally defamatory

From the Wikipedia article on the Orebro party

“ Split from the left

The initiative to found the Örebro Party was taken in early 2014 by Markus Allard, who is also the first party leader. Allard had previously held positions as substitute member of the Örebro municipal council and district chairman of the Young Left in Örebro; in December 2013 he was expelled from the Left Party and its youth wing Young Left for "liking" the Revolutionary Front, a militant revolutionary socialist and anti-fascist organization, on Facebook and refusing to disavow it when questioned.[6] Allard has stated that the real reason for his expulsion was that he was perceived as a threat to the established party bureaucracy.[7][8]

While Allard has described himself as a Communist,[9] and a Marxist,[8][10] at its founding in March 2014 he defined the Örebro Party as "broad left".[9] At that time the party considered itself a "local party that wants to carry on the labour movement's ideals", and "not interested in administrating the current society".[11]”

Colours:

Red Black

This sounds like a socialist, anarchist or Ancap group that believes in borders

NoImmatureAdHom3• 23 days ago

Mullvad does an excellent job, and I support them.

kfreds44• 23 days ago

Thank you.

NoImmatureAdHom3• 23 days ago

I get that this is in the news (or at least the nerd news), but really...do y'all canvass the companies you buy things from, figure out on net who the people who work for them support in politics, ask whether that's what you like, and move your business around based on that?

It seems crazy to me. Part and parcel of having a pluralistic society is that we treat each other the same in public-facing parts of life without regard for stuff like sex, political positions, etc.

You gonna refuse to accept mail from the postman who supports something you don't like? What about the ice cream shop?

Aachen7• 23 days ago

I don't know the verb canvassing (I'm not a native speaker) but assuming you mean something like vetting each company I buy from: that seems impossible. One can only do so much. Seems important to do what you can, though. I could understand the viewpoint that this person's earned money is theirs to spend; I can also understand people that don't want to fund this and are happy to have heard of it (even if the damage has been done now)

The argument, if I've understood it correctly, sounds a bit like the common pattern of asking someone who tries to buy ethical products whether they're impeccable/perfect themselves. Like asking someone who is in favor of a local wind turbine whether they've ever flown or such. You can only do so much as an average individual

deaux13• 23 days ago

It's different. There are things you can reasonably vet, and things you reasonably can't vet. For example, "is the diamond in the wedding ring I'm buying lab grown". "Is the fish I'm buying endangered". In many countries, "what kind of conditions did the chicken who laid these eggs live in". "Is this shirt I'm buying made to last or going to fall apart after a few washes".

Whether $0.01 of every $1 you spend to a company goes to someone who donates to far-right views, is absolutely impossible to vet and this news changes nothing about it. Would every $1 given to ExpressVPN lead to less $ ending up with someone who promotes such views? The truth is, we have absolutely no clue, we can't know, and there are so many factors in play here that this news doesn't move the needle. Pretending otherwise is performative behavior to make one feel better about themselves.

OkayPhysicist• 22 days ago

This guy isn't just the CEO (someone who "works for them"), it's a cofounder with 50% ownership. Personally, I avoid buying anything from the KKK bake sale.

NoImmatureAdHom3• 8 days ago

That's a pretty unfair read in my opinion. Whatever the Mullvad guy supports (it is...a bit difficult for me to understand), it isn't the KKK. It isn't even close to the KKK. Not comparable. And he owns half the company, which means he has a lot of control...but the company is much more than ownership. It employs a lot of people and does a lot of good work. The good work it does is totally unrelated to the guy's political leanings. Whereas, a KKK bake sale is by and for the KKK. You buy muffin, $ from muffin less muffin costs --> KKK.

negergreger• 23 days ago

Nice to see some tech leadership with strong moral fibre. I'll definitely renew with mullvad too in the future.

bakies• 23 days ago

guess I'll cancel my tailscale mullvad sub

simultsop• 23 days ago

It is a trend now, loby your way to lawmaking. Then set the laws as you need. No surprises.

eudamoniac3• 23 days ago

Why are leftists so histrionic? If we had a thread made every time an executive espoused far left opinions we'd overload the HN servers. Why is an executive being far right even news?

iamnothere14• 23 days ago

Because their puppeteers know exactly what buttons to push when they need a good smear campaign. (And because lumpens despise the pro-labor left.)

sph5• 22 days ago

I am leftist [1]. It’s not a coincidence that leftist groups in the world always devolve to infighting and splintering, while right-wing parties have no issue getting their radical ideas through because they don’t spend all their energy deciding who is part of the ingroup and who should be cancelled for wrongthink.

1: this is why I don’t usually label myself as such, as I am aware that the world is more complex than red and blue thinking.

CheeryBaker• 23 days ago

Fredrik,

I just wanted you to know that while I dont support Daniels views, I believe you guys at Mullvad are doing the right thing.

I despise cancel culture, but I understand people want to "vote with their wallet" . I will be staying a Mullvad customer.

fakeBeerDrinker• 23 days ago

This is great news. New Mullvad subscriber here!

justicehunter2• 23 days ago

Does not feel good to support such a cause. Will cancel mine and give ivpn a go. It really is a shame, I was happy with mullvad and their mission. I just wouldn't sleep well if I kept using it

kfreds44• 23 days ago

I'm sorry to hear that. Thank you for the compliment. Good luck.

teravor• 23 days ago

mullvad's mistake was to respond. it's all universally performative, the only reason it elicits reactions (1000+ comments here) when the view of a megacorp don't is because people anticipate the ability to elicit a response from a smaller company like mullvad.

rule number one: ignore any and all political controversies, don't respond in any way. deviation is nearly always punished. unless it's part of some PR campaign with a side-risk of backfire.

bigyabai5• 23 days ago

Mullvad did not respond, as far as I'm aware. One of the owners has chimed in with their opinion, but I have not seen any official acknowledgement from Mullvad, the business entity.

deaux13• 23 days ago

mullvad's mistake was to respond. it's all universally performative, the only reason it elicits reactions (1000+ comments here) when the view of a megacorp don't is because people anticipate the ability to elicit a response from a smaller company like mullvad.

You're underestimating the large influence of paid actors/FUD here. It's no coincidence that in this very thread, normally supposedly intelligent people conveniently forget that about half the companies they buy stuff from have blatant MAGA-like CEOs. HN didn't suddenly suffer from a 20 point IQ drop.

rwyinuse5• 23 days ago

The party seems to have some bizarre policies, but on migration can't really blame them considering how badly Sweden has failed to integrate humanitarian migrants. There is so much gang violence, so many people of migrant background marginalized and living on welfare without any hope of a better future.

I will gladly continue buying from Mullvad. There is nothing wrong with forced deportations. Without them anyone can come, claim asylum, and stay indefinitely if their country of origin doesn't want them back. That is simply idiotic waste of tax payer's money, and in case of criminals, also a hazard to public safety. Pretty much every Western European country does forced deportations, especially those of criminals.

jrflowers• 23 days ago

takes inspiration from marxist ideology[42] 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 transfers that are a net negative for society

lmao This is like the song Tequila by The Champs but instead of a long instrumental it’s John Galt’s speech and instead of “Tequila!” it’s “Marxism!”

https://youtube.com/watch?v=U_JFLb1IItM

It is amazing that if you say “Marxist” after any possible combination of words some people will go “oh wow that is leftism”

Utter gibberish, like a picture of Ayn Rand wearing an ironic Hugo Chavez shirt.

dzonga• 23 days ago

lack of nuance in human affairs - is what ends up killing these conversations & making them explosive.

brachkow• 23 days ago

Mullvad does more for internet privacy than any other company. There are a lot of people saying that they will not use Mullvad anymore. What are they going to do? Support ExpressVPN or some spyware VPN with unknown owners? To achieve what – reduce the roster of companies fighting for a free internet to 0?

Remember, currently individuals elected by you, from parties ranging from goodest to kindest, are voting for passport internet and chat control, with little to no well-funded opposition.

I dislike that Mozilla is spending their money sponsoring random political organizations while asking for money here and there. I dislike that EFF is sometimes busy with American politics more than internet freedoms, and I dislike that Alexandra Elbakyan believes in some kind of esoteric stalinism.

But despite all that, I still support all of them! Because they are doing good things that nobody else does.

There is a "what kind of American are you" meme that is usually applied to people who have zero tolerance for people with different political views. Of course, it applies only to evil people???

No! If you think that "canceling" organizations on the matter that their leadership is kinda suspected of maybe supporting something that doesn't 100% align with your last ballot is a good deed, this meme is actually about you!

deaux13• 23 days ago

Mullvad does more for internet privacy than any other company. There are a lot of people saying that they will not use Mullvad anymore. What are they going to do? Support ExpressVPN or some spyware VPN with unknown owners? To achieve what – reduce the roster of companies fighting for a free internet to 0?

Exactly. This blatantly obvious fact being conveniently ignored by hundreds of comments here, is not organic.

_blk• 23 days ago

But that Bill Gates [Foundation] is a larger sponsor to WHO than all nations short of the US (at least prior to the currently elected govt) wouldn't dare making the news this far left into the interwebs... Just sayin' - figured I'd invest a few karma points into self reflection ;) love y'all

999900000999• 23 days ago

Once I meet a Swedish girl whose parents were from XYZ.

She went on a rant on how new refugees from XYZ were ruining everything.

That’s the immigration debate in most of the world. The moment a new immigrant gets their citizenship they often feel they’re the last good one and all pathways need to be shutdown.

I’ll switch to a different vpn. It’s one thing to donate a nominal amount as a private citizen. It’s a whole different matter to be the primary source of funding.

skjoldr3• 23 days ago

This discussion is completely and irrevocably poisoned by the lack of general understanding of the distinctions between citizens, non-citizen permanent residents, legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, asylum seekers, economic immigrants, and war refugees under temporary EU protection (Ukrainians). Especially the differences between the situations in the US and the EU. This whole comment section is, sadly, full of people writing pure nonsense. Please educate yourselves on this big and important topic before posting.

reassess_blind3• 23 days ago

Given your understanding on these topics, can you give your opinion on whether this party (in particular their immigration stance) is as far-right extremist as the articles claim?

kfreds44• 23 days ago

I disagree. This thread contains tons of empathetic people who seem to understand each other, and disagree with each other. It's a breath of fresh air. Sure, there are also some angry posters who don't seem to lean into curiosity, but together we can make them the minority.

throwawaypath10• 23 days ago

There's nothing wrong with promoting or protecting the interests of native or indigenous people over those of immigrants or foreigners. This is not a far-right fringe belief, though some are trying to paint it so.

SOLAR_FIELDS• 23 days ago

Where do you have documentation of this party even doing this thing? The Wikipedia entry linked elsewhere does not talk about this perspective at all

throwawaypath10• 22 days ago

You reply to the wrong comment?

MadSkull• 23 days ago

The real far right are talking about melting down immigrants and using them to fill pot holes.

This guy is your best blocker to this and will surely restore balance.

sph5• 23 days ago

I am anti-racist, son of immigrants, son of a mixed race couple, yet what scares me is the mobbing of people against other that have a different opinion than yours, as seen in this thread.

Plenty saying they cannot in good conscience support Mullvad, while directly and indirectly giving money to people like Bezos, Musk or Cook, among others, or supporting politicians from both aisles, who have the power to do much worse at a greater scale. I call this hypocrisy, and it is widespread in social media driven mob mentality. Intolerance about intolerants turns you an intolerant.

I like Mullvad the company, and I know that people might support politics I find despicable. Such is life outside of silly internet echo chambers.

kfreds44• 23 days ago

what scares me is the mobbing of people against other that have a different opinion than yours, as seen in this thread.

I am dismayed by the anti-intellectual climate in the world as well, but HN is an oasis of empathy and curiosity compared to other platforms. Look at the people I've engaged with. Many of them vehemently disagree with Daniel, and with my position. They understand it, compliment Mullvad, and say they unfortunately have to leave. That's the way political discourse should work.

Plenty saying they cannot in good conscience support Mullvad, while directly and indirectly giving money to people like Bezos, Musk or Cook, among others, or supporting politicians from both aisles, who have the power to do much worse at a greater scale. I call this hypocrisy, and it is widespread in social media driven mob mentality.

Good point. We should probably be more open about how much good Mullvad has done over the years. I've been so focused on just doing stuff, and not telling people about it.

I like Mullvad the company, and I know that people might support politics I find despicable. Such is life outside of silly internet echo chambers.

Thank you.

thisislife2• 23 days ago

Interesting. My friends and I were recently discussing the rise of right-wing parties and leaders around the world, and we observed that many of these controversial elected leaders also have an "Anarchist" trait. These leaders have enacted policies that deliberately cause a lot of social and / or economic upheaval - bordering on anarchy - which have ultimately resulted in mass transfer of wealth from the lower classes to the rich, and widened the gap between the poor and the rich. And, unsurprisingly, many of these right-wing parties and leaders are backed billionaires (and now trillionaires). Factor in the role of BigTech and their social media platforms, that have aided their rise, it does seem like even these corporate leaders who aren't necessarily enamoured by such political ideologies still feel the need to tacitly support them because they recognise that it provides them more opportunities for capitalistic exploitation ...

hashstring• 23 days ago

So, where are we moving? Proton? Need some good recommendations!

dumdellidum• 23 days ago

Everyone hating, I hope you check every company you use to make sure their political stance align with yours.

No AWS or Google Cloud if you're pro-abortion, for example:

"Together, Amazon, AT&T, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Comcast, CVS, General Motors, Google, T-Mobile, Walgreens, Walmart, Wells Fargo and Verizon have spent at least $15.2 million to support anti-abortion politicians, according to publicly available political spending disclosures." from https://truthout.org/articles/companies-like-amazon-and-cvs-...

tomburgs• 23 days ago

Admittedly I had never heard of this party before, but after looking into them calling them far-right seems to be quite a leap.

If you didn't know, Sweden used to be extremely welcoming to asylum seekers and refugees about a decade ago. What they got out of it were gangs, their youth being exploited to enact crimes (due to leniency towards minors), and neighborhoods that even the police doesn't dare drive through. Having a party that calls for integration and adaption to Swedish values, and at worst remigration, seems rather tame. Especially so if you just take a look across Øresund and see what's happening in Denmark.

Parae4• 23 days ago

You're confusing causation and correlation. There are no links between asylum seekers, refugees and gangs, and crimes.

What leads to crime is not welcoming refugees, it's leaving people on the back in a state of precariousness.

akimbostrawman3• 23 days ago

There are no links between asylum seekers, refugees and gangs, and crimes.

Criminal statistics and per capita would disagree

leereeves• 23 days ago

leaving people on the back in a state of precariousness.

What do you mean? Don't they benefit from Sweden's generous educational and welfare systems in addition to extra support for migrants?

ulfw• 23 days ago

It is getting almost impossible to consume media or use tech products without supporting a nazi sympathizer or supporter or downright nazi himself nowadays

olelele4• 23 days ago

The Örebro Party seems similar to Bundnis Sara Wagenknecht in Germany. They are a splinter group of mostly older Linke who are anti immigrant. There is also this super weird fringe on the legit extreme left here, the Anti-deutsche antifa who are pro-Israel and islamophobic.

cloudie78• 23 days ago

A question to everyone who’s cancelling their subscription over this because “my money ends up financing politics I disagree with”

How many hands does the money need to pass through before it’s considered okay?

blitzar• 23 days ago

Frankly I am suspicious of anyone throwing money into politics; left / centre / right.

Small scale donors dont even get off without drawing my ire - finding out someone you know donated to a politician / party is like finding out they sent money to a nigerian prince to unlock their share of the inheritance.

tremorscript• 22 days ago

Oh no :-( but why the far right? You can sponsor sensible politics and politicians so that we get more of those.

I am a very happy customer since the service is extremely very good, the vpn problem was solved and I am so sorry but the smallest amount that I pay even if it is 0.01 cent cannot go to support the far right(or the far left).

Sorry.

But now the problem is to find a decent vpn service that is not private equity or malware.

bingoMen3• 22 days ago

No one is free until everyone is free. Daniel Berntsson is acting against freedom, he has chosen to vote for and support a party that protects only the /freedom/ of a small part of the world and seeks to “defend” it at any cost—through racism, stereotyping, and the criminalization of people fleeing exploitation and war. Europe is rich only because every corner of the world is exploited by Europe and the US. Now the tables have turned, and they want to protect what they have stolen.

pidgeon_lover• 22 days ago

I will be buying a Mullvad subscription because of this. Keep up the good work! Private individuals should have the right to free speech/expression, whatever that is, and that is a value I admire this VPN company for standing up for.

Too many companies pay lip service to the current political fad du jour, and it's annoying. I like an apolitical company that does its thing and doesn't pretend more.

sergiogjr• 22 days ago

I thought people were paying for Mullvad for a service. "Oh, my money is going to fund a political party I disagree with". You pay for a service, and thinking you now have a say on how the service provider decides to use the money they've received is such hubris. "But instead of using the money I gave the company to buy healthy food for his kids, he chose to buy processed food. I'm out." It's sad, almost immature.

andsoitis• 21 days ago

From the wikipedia article on the Örebro Party:

"Some key issues for the Örebro Party locally include strong secularism, a 30-hour workweek with retained pay, lowered wages for politicians, expanded social housing, abolishing preschool-fees, making public transport free of charge, ending taxpayer funding of what it sees as wasteful sculptures, monuments and art and introducing free dental care. Nationally the party has set out large-scale remigration, closing the Swedish borders to immigration, a stricter assimilation policy and ending taxes on energy and fuel as some of its key issues."

And the party leader has described himself as a Communist and Marxist.

What makes them far-right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Örebro_Party

The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

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