Swedish VPN vendor Mullvad is facing a backlash from some customers after co-founder Daniel Berntsson personally donated SEK 5 million (£385,000, $519,000) to the controversial populist Örebropartiet, which is running in Sweden’s national elections for the first time.
Berntsson has this week published a blog post explaining the donation, alongside posts titled “Immigration,” “Political individualism,” and “Moral individualism.” Before that, he had not posted since 2019.
The flurry of posts follows weeks of customer criticism over the donation – for example, Finnish blog Moonwriting’s post “I’m done with Mullvad.” Another blog, Unutterable, is more direct: “Mullvad funding the far-right and the problem with tech company ownership.” The Hacker News discussion thread about the donations has reached a remarkable 1,784 comments so far.
Mullvad was co-founded and is still jointly owned and run by two CEOs, Berntsson and Fredrik Strömberg. Its name, as reflected in the company’s logo, is Swedish for “mole.” It also offers the Mullvad Browser, a privacy-enhanced fork of Firefox ESR co-developed with the Tor Project. Swedish socialist newspaper Flamman (“The Flame”) revealed the donation in its story “High-profile techie gives millions to the Örebro Party.”
In a post on X, the company said it was devoted to freedom of speech and tolerance, saying: “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.”
Örebro party advocates for “remigration” which is an alt right term for mass deportation or ethnic cleansing. The article is a bit obtuse on this. Basically this means crimes against humanity because it would mean detention centers or concentration camps and insane cruelty. Unfortunately this needs to become the end of Mullvad.
None of this is really surprising though, backlash is to be expected. Most people in most countries are against mass immigration, which does not make one a fascist. Sweden is now 8.1% Muslim which is a lot to ask of people. Since 1990 it rose from <1% and still seems to be rising. Most are not actually practicing Islam though, only like 25% or so according to the numbers on wikipedia. Which also has been my anecdotal experience in my country.
The issue is that the large parties do not budge on the neoliberal idea of immigration, to fuel economic growth and depressing wages. So only extremists or fringe parties remain to be voted on. Some people simply feel very strongly about “this is our land”. And in most countries this is completely different than the mostly empty / very low population density USA which is traditionally an immigration country. It is not just a question of ideology. People have a right to feel less than holy thoughts about preserving their homeland. My point is that ignoring these feelings is irresponsible politics. Especially in times of looming economic decline and coming mass refugees from climate change.
Of course, Örebro is not acceptable because it advocates fascist policies and should be outlawed and all supporters shunned.
I think you articulated greatly something that’s been around my mind for a while.
I’ve been a while thinking how migration policies should be revised in the EU, attending to human rights and seeking the best for everyone. Personally I think the route to take is improve the countries of origin, do whatever we can so people doesn’t even feel the need to leave all their friends and family behind for economic reasons.
But as the EU is not addressing this because corporations profit from mass inmigration, the alt-right way of thinking about inmigration (which is basically genocide) is rising.
I might be misreading your comment, but I kinda want to be a bit on defence here. I apologise if my comment is misplaced.
Some people migrate because they genuinely want to live elsewhere. I’m from Russia and migrated to Germany for family, but before that I also lived in other countries. The reason was not because living in Moscow was bad (years ago before the current war, it wasn’t), but because it’s exciting to embrace new cultures and maybe fall in love with a city and its people on another part of the Earth.
Similarly, a few of my German friends migrated to the US, UK, Spain and Southeast Asia because they followed their hearts, not because they can’t make a living at home… And a couple of my American buddies now live in Germany. Is it that bad? Do the foreigners really bring thar much unrest?
I think the mood changed significantly in the last decade. Now everyone is seen as a part of evil mass of immigrants. (And more often than not, racism plays a significant role in those discussions. the darker the skin, the least welcomed people are).
It seems like mullvad always did the right thing, and stood for privacy. Very strange move by them
The Proton CEO or found is I think also a libertarian or something. Libertarians are stupid, but they do actually believe in something.
I agree on the point of not ignoring these feelings. It’s a tough question, how to change the culture to be more welcoming to immigration in the time of looming climate refugee crises. Just wanted to point out that Sweden has a lower population density (26 ppl/km2) than the US (38 ppl/km2). Density is probably not the issue, although how all that land is put to use might be one of them.
I agree that the feeling should be addressed but I don’t think immigration should be treated at all like the watering down of the political identity. Immigrants come to other countries, in part, to seek a better life. They become just as nationalist as anyone if given a country who cares for them and is worthy of being prideful about.
In Germany, the CDU and Merz work to strip Germans of their culture when they attack public healthcare or enforce working on Sundays. They would and will reduce vacation time, make trains worse, and deregulate the things that make Germany Germany the longer they’re in power. Culture is something that is generated when the common person is wealthy and influential to their community, not just the millionaires. Especially not the millionaires like Merz who are selling our home and our quality of life nickle by nickel.
“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.”
I’m not sure what they mean by this. Plenty of corporations do make animal rights, taxes, public healthcare, etc. an important part of their values and mission. Why would it be obvious that they’re not?
Besides, we do want Nazis and fascists to be pariahs. Putting pressure on Mullvad not to associate is a good thing.
Specially in Nordics. Social corporate responsibility is a very long tradition in Nordics, specially with due to stuff like co-operative customer, producer or worker owned companies, state enterprises and so on.
Including leadership teams behavior. Companies do get flack for what kind of persons they hire as leadership, since it is (pretty reasonably) assumed their mindset and worldview affects their conduct while leading the company.
Plus not only is he leader, he is owner so again money to company’s pocket is in the end money to his pocket.
One can’t claim “we are responsible company, while having opposite kind of CEO/leader”. It is his private matter he has these opinions, what isn’t private is him being company leader. Company doesn’t want his private opinions affecting the company, get rid of him as leader.
It would be one thing, if he was “lineworker” employee. Then person can have private opinions don’t affect company. However he isn’t mere salary employee in the depths of server hall lifting and plugging in servers to racks and cleaning cooling equipment clean. He is company leadership.
I agree (though I still think it is a good thing to fire fascists, even when they are lowly employees lol)
The guy made a donation with his own money. His donation is no more Mullvads than a donation you make privately is representative of the company you work for.
The guy made a donation with his own money
Uhh where do you think that money comes from?
If you’ve bought Mullvad’s services you have unwittingly contributed to that donation.
Every nazis salary comes from somewhere, or do you boycott just about everything?
do you boycott just about everything?
It’s just not buying stuff. You make it sound impossible.
No I mean, every nazis or racist gets their money from somewhere, be it Mullvad or Nestlé or Walmart, how do you avoid supporting that? Do you just don’t buy stuff from anywhere or do you have an ever shrinking base of viable options?
So if I use Mullvad, some of that is funding far-right politics?
Yes, although frankly it’s really fucking hard to name anything that isn’t these days. Like, you probably can’t even go grocery shopping without some of that money finding us way to alt right politics.
At this point it’s safer to just assume every purchase you make is funding far right politics.
Damnit, this little girl selling me lemonade got me good.
This is a frustrating pposition to be in, particularly when few people are willing to offer viable alternatives in such threads.
I don’t want to let a purity test be the reason I impulse switch to a less effective VPN, but don’t want to indirectly fund things I don’t support. Yes, money I spend on Mullvad might go towards shit I don’t want, but what else is on par with Mullvad that doesn’t have some other downside?
Afaik IVPN is really the only alternative. I’ll be switching to them soon when my account expires.
Before I switched from proton VPN to mullvad VPN, I thought I remembered when doing research there was only a few providers that said they did no logs, and had proof either through 3rd party audits or shown they couldn’t provide anything when court ordered.
Does IVPN have proof they do not log? Because im in the same boat, I dont want my money supporting fascists, but i also dont know of any alternative to switch to?
Besides switching back to proton VPN (which id rather not get into any controversy around them)
Pretty happy for 8 years with Windscribe, a Canadian VPN. The fulfill their promises and no neo-nazis so far… 🤞
Allegedly, windscribes CEO is a Musk’s fan boy. Also, they are an AI first company (both support and dev)
“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.”
The part being unsaid here is “that Daniel’s private donation to a political party is NOT INCOMPATIBLE WITH Mullvad’s values or mission” (pardon the double negative)
That’s what I have issue with. They’re saying Daniel’s own personal purpose/mission (the donation being an expression of that) is compatible with their mission, or at minimum does not conflict.
What does “freedom of speech” have to do with expression of Mullvad employees? Mullvad isn’t a government. Free speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences. If Daniel’s own personal mission/purpose is incompatible with Mullvad’s, severing their relationship with him would be appropriate and not a violation of his freedom of speech. Of course, this goes back to, it’s not incompatible.
The “tolerance” bit, Daniel’s own personal mission/purpose as expressed by his donation is inherently inhumanely intolerant. Again, Mullvad is indirectly stating that intolerance is not incompatible with their mission/purpose, which makes the “tolerance” bit a contradiction. They might as well have people working for them that believe you have zero right to privacy.
Also his donation is presumably either somewhat or entirely enabled by mullvad so voting with your dollar is about the only way to express dissatisfaction.
Since there are always people who, purposely or not, misrepresent what’s going on here and I’ve hashed it out in other threads I’ll paste it here as well as some links to share alternatives. Like, how do I see upvotes on a comment saying it’s a marxist far left party? The National Socialists also promised homes and dental and everything good for the Aryan race once they ethnically cleansed the rest. They certainly weren’t any kind of left wing.
Sorry for the wall of text, copying and pasting from some of my other comments, I’ll bold the main points to create the throughline:
What, by definition, constitutes fascism?
often Fascism : a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition
At the core of fascism is loyalty to tribe, ethnic identity, religion, tradition, or, in a word, nation. —Jason Stanley
Just to make sure we’re not looking at a singular definition, let’s look at Wikipedia too
Fascism (/ˈfæʃɪzəm/ FASH-iz-əm) is a far-right, authoritarian, and ultranationalist political ideology and movement that rose to prominence in early-20th-century Europe.[1][2][3] Fascism is characterized by support for a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived interest of the nation or race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.[3][4] Opposed to communism, democracy, liberalism, pluralism, and socialism,[5][6] fascism is at the far-right of the traditional left–right spectrum.[1][6][7]
And now, let’s look at what the Örebro party’s own stated platform, which received 72% of its funding from the Mullvad founder, which also amounted to 27 times their total funding in 2024, and has directly led to them stating that with this funding they can field candidates whereby they couldn’t previously:
Some of its key issues include strong secularism, a 30-hour workweek with retained pay, lowered wages for politicians, ending taxes on energy and fuel, ending taxpayer funding of what it sees as wasteful sculptures, monuments and art, large-scale remigration, expanded social housing, a stricter assimilation policy, and free dental care.[3][4]
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
And what’s remigration?
Remigration is a far-right concept referring to the ethnic cleansing[1] via mass deportation of non-white minority populations, especially immigrants and sometimes including native-born citizens, to their place of racial ancestry.[2][3]
So fascism is about racial and national purity and hierarchy, as we defined, and the Orebro party supports remigration, which is a concept of forcing immigrants out of countries to preserve the purity of “culture” and the race of the nation.
“Sweden is for the Swedes”
“Israel is for Israelis”
“America is for Americans”
“Germany is for the Germans”
For those looking for other vpn options:
https://vpn.techlore.tech/
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1ijfqfLrJWLUVBfJZ_YalVpstWsjw-JGzkvMd6u2jqEk/htmlview#gid=231869418
If they are rich they are almost always a right wing asshole. Why would anyone be surprised by this?
Per his blog he’s a “libertarian anarchist”.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
->libertarian.
I always read that as ‘far right, but kinda ashamed, or can’t get laid by claiming it so….’
Totes.
I’m seriously worried about what’s going on around this.
There is quite the push here for people to move to VPNs under the legals jurisdiction of surveillance heavy states, not just the US and UK but also places like Gibraltar and the British Virgin Islands which are British Overseas Territories with the same laws as Britain except were they passed specific local legislation that overrides British Law.
We’re talking about places with Information Courts which issue secret mass surveillance orders to companies based in or operating there and it doesn’t mater if that VPN is no logs because for all you know they’ve been forced to install realtime surveillance equipment/software and they can’t even tell you because BY THE LAW OF WERE THEY OPERATE if they did so they would end up in jail.
I would expect that the kind of people who would leave Mullvad because one of it’s owners is a far-right nutter are also the kind of people who don’t want everything they do and say tracked by the likes of the US or UK.
Further, the push is pervasive. For example https://vpn.techlore.tech/ is supposed to help you choose a good VPN, only if you look at those VPNs based in British Overseas Territories (Gibraltar, BVI) they’re listed as “Not 14-eyes” which that’s bullshit - I was actually curious and went and look at how Legislation works in Gibraltar and, as I wrote above, they have the same as in Britain except were they wrote their own legislation that overrides British legislation, which means that (unless somebody can point me out the legislation in Gibraltar that overrides it), the very same legislation that support the mass surveillance activities in Britain as a member of not only the “14-eyes” international surveillance agreements but the actual “5-eyes” one, applies to Gibraltar and hence to the likes of IVPN.
Frankly, looking for a replacement for Mullvad whilst having some awareness of the mass surveillance shit in supposedly democratic nations is scary as fuck, since most VPNs, for all their (possibly theatrical) “No logs” and whatnot, are actually in places with Information Courts which can issue secret court orders forcing them to install mass surveillance equipment.
Absolutely, if all you care about is avoiding lawyer letters because of pirating stuff, any “No Logs” VPN will probably do, but if you’re worried about the rise of the Far-Right then it makes sense that you’re not into there being a real risk that all you’re doing over your supposedly “No logs” VPN is in fact being logged directly into NSA or GCHQ systems (in the kind of country whose governments think being a leftwinger is “extremism” or even “terrorism”),
I made the switch to IPVN and it’s felt exactly the same. Maybe even better. Same price. Servers in multiple locations. Allows routing through 2 VPN servers. No logs. No money going to racist ideology.
Mullvad can claim whatever they like about their values, but they are a for-profit company. The profits of the company are being used to fund racial segregation. If they believe in their values they’ll switch to a non-profit foundation. Until that time they can get fucked!
I’m curious if they offer port forwarding? That feature has been keeping me on PIA despite ethical concerns
AirVPN does port forwarding, and they’re less dodgy than PIA. Proton also does but there’s some questions raised by the CEOs support of Trump (still less dodgy than PIA though)
The CEO didn’t support Trump: https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-trump-a-deeper-analysis-and-surprising-findings-aed4fee4305e
The CEO made an official statement and then the official Proton account doubled down. Praising Donald Trump and JD Vance and insisting, at the time, that the Republican party would be the better party unless Democrats did something about it.
I’m familiar with this link though. It’s the most suspicious, anonymous, intentionally incomplete, poorly written, AstroTurf-looking thing I’ve ever seen before. (How AstroTurfy? Proton officially uses it as a reference. So it gets extra scrutiny.)
I suppose we read different things, because what they said is that republicans aren’t “friendly with big tech” and that’s a good thing. There are other blog posts where they explain their position in detail, like https://proton.me/blog/trump-control-nsa-privacy
I’m familiar with this link though.
Yours doesn’t load for me.
You may be familiar, but you refuse to argue on its merits and sources, of which there are plenty.
And by the way, if we were to talk astroturfing, there are a handful of accounts in this community that consistently post negative comments about Proton. I’m not saying this is an orchestrated attack against them, but it’s really damn suspicious that in every topic tangential to privacy or VPNs, there’s always someone mentioning how awful Proton is.
Hard to critique me if you can’t open the links to see what the official accounts say, and your anomymous Proton-backed blog post doesn’t mention it either. Here’s a relevant snippet they disappeared.
Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.
- Proton_Team on Reddit, January 2025
Your link is to a 2016 blog post that says, in large font,
It is not Trump’s fault
So forgive me if I don’t think this is exonerating evidence, but rather something that resembles Proton moving from a more modest both-sides stance to attempting a very partisan one.
The “it doesn’t matter” part of the blog post is also dangerously inaccurate, implying any privacy violation in Switzerland is illegal while, in reality, Swiss authorities have gotten Proton to disclose user data several times in high-profile incidents. Here’s the biggest one in my mind. And another and another.
At the time it was true, corporate dems were way more likely to be in bed with big tech. That’s just a fact.
The “it doesn’t matter” part of the blog post is also dangerously inaccurate, implying any privacy violation in Switzerland is illegal while, in reality, Swiss authorities have gotten Proton to disclose user data several times in high-profile incidents. Here’s the biggest one in my mind. And another and another.
Ah, I remember you now. You’re the guy who thinks that privacy equals absolute immunity from court orders! That’s never the case and will never be.
