Could someone fully explain the mullvad controversy. From my knowledge so far it seems like the cofounder donated to an alt right party and it’s probably a bad sign for the company. Anything I’m missing?
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- 12 hours
I’m missing even more. What does “paying for Mullvad” mean? What is the product?
- 12 hours
their primary product is a VPN. for ages they’ve been the best in class for privacy vpn. however, it turns out their CEO is basically singlehandedly bankrolling a far right political party in Sweden so people are looking for alternatives
- 2 days
- You pay for Mullvad.
- Mullvad makes a little bit of profit
- Profit goes in large part to one of the two co-owners
- Co-owner donates huge sums to a very right wing, incredibly racist party. This is not “just” a party that has some racism. It is a true nationalistic racist party with despicable politics.
So paying for Mullvad indirectly funds this party.
- Random Dent@lemmy.mlEnglish1 day
Yup. As in, referring to immigrants as ‘parasites’ level racism.
Sweden belongs to the Swedes. We have to make sure that we take care of our own damn people and we must deport these damn parasites who sit and live at our expense.
- Markus Allard
- 2 days
One of the co-founders/co-ceo’s almost single handedly funded a racist political party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Örebro_Party that wants Sweden to manufacture weapons.
The other co-founder/co-ceo stated he did not agree with it, but also doesn’t really care because ‘free speech’
Mullvad stated that users who were not happy could apply for refunds. some have, some haven’t.
Lemmy, and other social media platforms have multiple threads about this, including very obviously biased threads designed to mislead people into believing it was the company who made the donation, or that there is only one ceo.
Paying mullvad does equal funding that political party.
- 2 days
But the profits of the company are being used to fund that political party. If people cancel their subscription the Mullvad CEO will earn less money and won’t be able to spend as much funding racial segregation. You should vote with your wallet as much as possible.
- 2 days
The Örebro Party (Swedish: Örebropartiet, ÖP or ÖrP) 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. The party has been variously characterised as left-wing and right-wing, as well as populist, nationalist and conservative.
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,[3] ending taxpayer funding of what it sees as wasteful sculptures, monuments and art and introducing free dental care.[4][5] 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.[6][7]
Don’t see anything particularly racist. And since when domestic weapons manufacture is the problem?
- 24 hours
" The party has been variously characterised as left-wing and right-wing, as well as populist, nationalist and conservative."
“Leaving the EU and NATO were on the table for ÖP. Regarding NATO Allard claimed that Sweden cannot trust or rely on NATO and that the country should instead seek to massively increase its weapons production and also become a major arms exporter, arguing it would benefit the Swedish economy”
"The party advocates for remigration policies, strong secularism, and assimilationist policies such as immediate closure of the Islamic charter schools.[70][71][72] Markus Allard initiated heavy debate in 2025 by claiming that Sweden is “the land for/belongs to the Swedes”
They also want to remove fuel taxation, they are pro nuclear, and are anti wind turbine.
- 1 day
I’m sure you can hand select passages about hitler that also suit your stance while making him seem like kermit the frog.
Since when are weapons not a problem?
These are literally the first passages from Wikipedia.
What country doesn’t have domestic weapons manufacturing? Is it a problem when US or France do it?
- 24 hours
Yes of course it is a problem when the usa, france, russia etc do it, it obviously makes them evil countries. Weapons exist to kill.
The usa is responsible for approximately 42% of the global arms market. 1 country, 42%, clearly not the good guys.
- 2 days
“Remigration” is ethnic displacement. There is most definitely something racist about that. It’s up there with some of the most heinous crimes against humanity you can commit.
2 daysA cofounder donated to the Örebro Party, which has an eclectic platform. Mostly, progressive liberals of the imperial core are (justifiably) upset about its immigration/“remigration” policies and upset about its anti-NATO policies.
Companies are owned by the bourgeoisie, who are right wing[1]. So “voting with your dollar” over this is largely performative, because the VPN you switch to will also be bourgeois-owned.
With the rare exception of bourgeois class traitors. ↩︎
Companies are owned by the bourgeoisie, who are right wing[1]. So “voting with your dollar” over this is largely performative
Yet they will still respond to capital pressure in large enough numbers. In a broken system like capitalism that’s what holds power. If not you can write off BDS and any other type of boycotts.
Mullvad didn’t fund Õbrero; one of Mullvad’s owners did, and boycotting Mullvad won’t un-donate those funds, because there’s no return policy on political donations.
Mullvad didn’t condemn the funding and the owner will certainly continue using profits from his company to fund far-right remigration efforts if he specifically chose that party instead of any other generic leftist party.
Also Mullvad is very expensive compared to other VPN’s to begin with. And Mullvad’s servers have been getting blocked everywhere lately so there’s no real reason to use it either. Might as well use AirVPN or the likes. I’m probably switching to Proton for ease of use but i might choose another sooner or later.
So largely performative. With enough pressure, Mullvad might say something negative about a bourgeois party, which won’t do anything.
There’s no reason to think Proton would be any different in this regard. Proton Mail Says It’s “Politically Neutral” While Praising Republican Party
They’re nowhere comparable. Proton’s case is relevant to their business and to VPN’s as a whole. Not just doing random private donations to Nazis. As they stated in response to the article:
Also objectively Proton would receive less money because they’re a lot cheaper.
The party isn’t properly alt right in any way that an anglosphere dweller would recognize.
It’s not a bad sign for the company in any way. Remember that mullvad was the vpn of choice for pedophiles distributing csam until it wasn’t.
Mullvads recent statement is also extremely carefully worded to avoid taking what the state would call a political stance. While we may recognize that not condemning the donor is political, what the state considers political is support or detraction from some party or of some speech. If mullvad were to make such a political statement it could be subject to a whole different kind of law.
They are nationalist racists trying to cloak themselves with populist leftist ideas. This is the leader of that party:
https://www.friatider.se/markus-allard-om-andra-generationens-invandrare-de-ska-ocksa-ut
Örebro Party leader Markus Allard goes to the election on expulsions. He opens to withdraw citizenship and also expel second generation of immigrants – even if they were born in Sweden.
“I’m prepared to cross corpses,” he said.One suggestion that he has is that citizenship and permanent residence permits can be torn up – with reference to “Sweden is the country of Swedes”.
In a section of Yoshi’s Podcast, Allard develops his view on expulsions and explains that he prepared to “go over corpses” to bring home unwanted immigrants. The host notes that there will be no beautiful sight when, for example, immigrant mothers who have been on maternity leave for 15 years are to be deported together with their children. “It’s not going to be pretty to send these people home,” he said. Markus Allard agrees, but says: I think you can handle that optics. Even the children will need to be deported, he explains.
He further explains that many of the problems relate to second-generation immigrants. They are going out too. Even if they were born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedes. They have not become Swedes. It says Sweden in the passport, but they have not been interested in becoming part of Sweden. There’s a difference. It’s a qualitative difference," Allard said
Remember; the Nazi’s did the same thing by strategically calling their party the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, despite them not being socialist nor a working class party. This was chosen because Socialism was gaining popularity, and thus the Nazi’s thought it would help their chances of getting votes and public support.
I think you did a good job characterizing the party’s immigration platform, but I don’t think that qualifies as alt right in the way it’s generally understood in the English speaking world.
That’s not to say it’s not fascist or right wing, just that I think unqualified the phrase alt right doesn’t tend to mean what that party bills itself as in addition to its immigration policy and where it seems to fit inside Swedish politics (which I don’t pretend to understand, only to recognize that it doesn’t seem to be called alt right in Swedish sources).
A couple of major differences are the English speaking alt rights strong religious current as compared to orebros explicit secularism, the alt right anti-liberal arts stance (it’s the bastion of cultural Marxism, you see) compared with orebros educational policy stance of encouraging music and arts education, the alt right urge to tear down social programs in general as opposed to orebros general position of building them up.
I wasn’t trying to suggest that orebro isn’t right wing but instead that it’s not alt right by any definition. I don’t think it even has a similar origin to the English speaking alt right having split from an existing party.
Again, that’s not to say it isn’t right, just that it’s not alt right.
- 1 day
Yes, if you believe they tell the truth (rather than them just co-opting popular ideas like funding education), they’re social fascist instead of straight fascist. I’m not sure they deserve the benefit of the doubt, and Hitler did the same thing, as that other commenter said, so there’s that. Because of all of this, I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to characterize them as fascist, far-right, etc.
- 23 hours
I don’t think I’m giving orebro the benefit of the doubt. I wouldn’t say it’s incorrect to call them fascist or far right either. I just think they’re pretty clearly not alt right.
I would personally say that’s unnecessary hairsplitting, since regardless of the specific flavor of evil, it’s still monumentally bad their CEO funded it.
I think there’s a real problem with that line of thinking.
Without understanding a persons politics are just vibes.
Also condensing the bloodthirsty futurists who imagine totalizing war of all against all and honestly quaint ethnonationalists who want to have the third reich but without all those pesky wars is pretty clearly a stumble even if you were to recognize that they’re both the enemy of global communism. It’s worth it to recognize that praline ice cream and pickles are wildly different things even if you don’t like either and they both start with the letter “p”.
And that’s what the op asked about. “It seems like it’s this thing, is that correct?” “No, it’s not that thing”. Which would, to your point, make it neither unnecessary nor hair splitting.
- 2 days
Daniel is one of the founders of Mullvad and part owner. He took a big chunk of change from his private wealth and donated it to a horseshoe loonie party. Horseshoe because they try to marry ideas from the extreme left to immigrant hateful ideas from the extreme right. Loonie is self explanatory. His donation made it possible for that party to run a nationwide campaign.
Mullvad users who got mad simplified this to Mullvad fees finance a Nazi party directly. Which isn’t true. How much of this donation truly came from VPN fees is also a matter of debate. They aren’t strictly Nazis, more xenophobic communists. But assholes are still assholes and people choose labels differently. There is a lot of kneejerk reacting going on.
The company seems to want to ride it out. They correctly point to this being a decision by a private citizen who may exercise his free speech by donating to the loonie party. But they either don’t recognize the PR hell of being guilty by association as a company or they know the subscription drain isn’t as bad as the online outrage makes it look like. They publicly say this is all about free speech, which is their DNA, yada yada yada.
Mullvad users who got mad simplified this to Mullvad fees finance a Nazi party directly.
You are making this up.
Those of us mad understand how the money changes hands.
It is mathematically correct to say that a portion of the energy I may contribute to Mullvad will end up financing fascism.
This isn’t only about the political donations. That’s a coowner/cofounder we are talking about. That’s significant. If some rank and file schmuck donated to nazis in his spare time and not a cofounder, it would be less bad. Still bad, but less damaging.
This cofounder has outsized infuence on how the culture of Mullvad is shaping up.
Do I want to support that when there are better, more private, VPN companies without the nazi cofounders? For example NymVPN mixnet.
There is no good reason to prefer Mullvad.
It’d be a different story is we only had two VPN companies and both had nazi founders. Then we’d have to weigh privacy vs nazism. But that’s not our situation right now.
- 2 days
You are making this up.
I don’t think I am. I was in at least two threads where people just referred to them as Nazis and in a stage of outrage weren’t open to other interpretations. However, my post can be taken as all users who got mad called them Nazis. Some got mad and didn’t call them Nazis. That’s why I said assholes are still assholes.
It is mathematically correct to say that a portion of the energy I may contribute to Mullvad will end up financing fascism.
It’s mathematically correct to say a portion of your fees in the past may have ended up in the coffers of the Örebro Party. It seems likely that continuing payments to the company may filter through Daniel to them as well. Facism is traditionally associated with right-wing extremism. This party is a Frankenstein monster of traditional associations and they lean further to the left than to the right, except on immigration. With “remigration” as the de rigeur pipe dream corner stone. Xenophobia alone doesn’t fascism make. The Soviet Union wasn’t exactly a hit destination for immigrants. So we either enlarge the definition of fascism to include these horseshoe loonies. Or we need a new word. Or we just agree to call them assholes and any continuing payments to Mullvad carry a mathematical risk of further financing assholes, more than one.
- 2 days
That’s basically it although I don’t think it’s technically alt-right. More specifically, he donated half a million USD to the Örebro Party
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.
