Daniel Berntsson, founder of Mullvad, gave a personal donation of 5 million SEK (roughly 450,000€) in 2025 to Örebropartiet. This enormous donation accounted for 72% of the party’s revenue in 2025.
How does this affect Mullvad’s legitimacy as a company advocating for a free and open internet, while also funding a political party whose agenda seem to contradict these values? The official party website (in Swedish) can be found via the link below.
Apparently they’ve now posted a response:
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.
In context, this seems…tone-deaf. “It’s okay! Immigrants are welcome to work for Mullvad even if the founders ‘dislike’ them.” Yikes.
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 would argue that those three things aren’t even all on the same level, and that’s without even addressing the fucking fascism of ‘re-migration’ policies.
That said, if you no longer want to be a Mullvad customer for philosophical reasons, we think it’s important to honor that, and will gladly refund you.
Unless you were smart enough to pay anonymously, in which case you’re welcome to doxx yourself, I guess.
Well I’m not going to stop using it until i’ve seen another VPN get raided and verified to not hand out my data.
Shit sucks but I’m not aware of any other VPN that doesn’t have accounts, and let’s you pay without a credit card.
disgusting? yes
surprising? no
libertarians and borderline-criminals have always shared the privacy space with anti-capitalist lefties, since before the Bolsheviks bulk-ordered their red shirts.
Okay.
Let me know when it affects the service.
A company that you trust with your privacy (one aspect) has been caught in league with mass surveillance loving fascists? Yeah I am sure that those are a perfect mix and it won’t lead to mass surveillance of its users like the dozens of VPNs now under Israeli mass - surveillance - fascist control.
It is just a complete coincidence that the people pushing more and more mass surveillance are buying up (and in this case winning over the controlling part of) the ways for normal people to avoid mass surveillance.
Neat.
Who made the device you’re posting on?
Communism is when no iPhone.
Antifascism is when no iPhone.
Tell me more about fighting capitalism, IndustryStandard@lemmy.world.
Tell me more about your passwords, address, and banking details.
Since you don’t mind privacy.
Wondering if it’s time that we as an anti-authoritarian left community, establish our own VPN…
What do you consider to be “anti-authoritarian left?”
So… A honeypot?
If it’s a honeypot for fascists but not one for antifascists, maybe. But I’d prefer no honeypot at all, rather one where governance is from the labourers, to the labourers.
A VPN operated exclusively for a single political group would flag everyone using it as that group.
True, I suppose a VPN operated by those supporting that group, then.
Not a honeypot, but a target. I see.
What do you suggest otherwise? I don’t want my money to go to fascists or surveillance states.
You don’t get that choice. Beans soak up the flavor of the broth, rocks get thrown out in the trash.
I’m not trying to be a jerk, but you literally have no control over what other people do and the whole point of a marketplace is to drill the social relationship down to cash.
A vpn service with a political angle like you suggested would immediately be targeted.
It’s why you can buy a che tee shirt but not actually ship oil to Cuba.
If you need the security of mullvad then i recommend you use it.
Now a communist vpn would be a great piece of political theater! Get one going then get black bagged over it, run a social media campaign to raise awareness, levitate the pentagon, it’d be fantastic!
Thanks for the heads up. Switching to Proton because of this. Mullvad has been bad lately anyways with most of their servers getting blocked every where.
The only thing keeping me on them was their reputation of being a bit less cooky than Proton but this pushed me over the edge
Proton’s CEO praised Trump, just saying. There’s IVPN which is Gibraltese.
Proton CEO praised something Trump did which isn’t a great look but debateable.
That’s wayyy less bad than Mullvad donating $500k to a Nazi party which advocates for remigration.
It’s not just praise though, Proton claimed Trump was standing up for the little guys which is rich considering that the fascist is a billionnaire, supporting the wealthiest to repress the labourers even more. And besides that, it’s also insane.
Hitler was somewhat an environmentalist, but cheering on Hitler for being that is insane, because that is ignoring all the other heinous shit he did.
I keep hearing about that praise, yet never once have I seen proof of it. Maybe I’m just using the wrong search engine. Might need to Google this.
https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-trump-republicans/
it came as a surprise last month when Proton CEO Andy Yen praised the Republican Party in a post on X, declaring that “10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned.” When the tweet went viral, Proton’s official Reddit account posted a now-deleted comment stating that “Until corporate Dems are thrown out, the reality is that Republicans remain more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.”
In response to a request for comment, Proton reiterated the claim that it is a “politically neutral organization,” then went on to state that “regardless of one’s views about the wider Republication platform, if you agree that action is needed on antitrust then the appointment of Gail Slater is a positive thing,” referring to President Donald Trump’s choice to head the Justice Department’s antitrust division. Proton further stated that “Big Tech CEOs are tripping over themselves to kiss the ring precisely because Trump represents an unprecedented challenge to their monopolistic dominance.”
OK, so he said that in January 2025. Just when Trump was taking over, and it did look at the time that the reps were actually at least talking with Proton execs, which is way more than the dems did. Proton reached out to Biden’s team more than once and they never were even given the time of day, Trump’s team got them in to talk. Whatever the environment is today (which I agree is complete shit and everything is ceumbling down because of Trump, Starmer and others), I can’t blame Proton for seeing that when this administration at least talked to them. Having said that, those do not qualify as praises, they qualify as comments on what it looked like at the moment. Praise means: to express a favorable judgment of someone or something. Saying that anyone is ‘more likely’ to do something does not qualify as a praise in my opinion. Much less saying anyone ‘was the evil and now the tables have turned’.
Anyway, thanks for the info, I was not aware of this, and because of what it is, my thoughts on this remain as they are.
We’d already had Trump’s last presidency to know that he wasn’t going to reign in big tech, so the CEO’s positive thoughts and hopefulness for the republican party and Trump’s picks were already insanely out of touch at best, IMO.
So I’m definitely not familiar with swedish politics, but does this site actually represent the entire party? The party site is just a very vague description of some group of people that sound like they’re anti left and anti right at the same time. The Wikipedia article on the party doesn’t really help make sense to what they expect to accomplish, but again that could just be my ignorance to it.
Would love to know more about all this, with more reliable sources if possible (vs a website that just says something without really providing sources). Mullvad is about trying to protect privacy with fighting big brother, and I’m really not seeing anything about the party that indicates it wants the opposite.
They’re practicing the rhetoric strategy known as Bonapartism, which is when you claim to be neither left nor right, but a third way, which is nonsensical as realistically you gotta stand for something. As for this party’s actual views, they’re social fascists (socialdemocracy for me, fascism for thee). They’re wildly racist.
The main thing to know and understand about them is that they want to ethnically cleanse sweden of people they consider non-swedes.
note that this is a local party, and as such their policies are focused on their local area only. apparently they plan to be on the national ballot this year but i’ve not seen any policy changes to reflect that. reading from an interview the founder did in 2022, he had to start his own branch of the left party youth wing because there wasn’t one where he lived, and as soon as they became official he found out that they didn’t like his opinions so he was forced out. as for what those opinions are…
– Vi började fråga oss vad som var relevant i människors vardag. Är radikalfeminismen relevant? Nej. Är frågan om hur många kön som finns relevant? Nej. Är gamla mossiga resonemang om huruvida Sovjet var en arbetarstat relevant? Nej.
Han upprördes av skatteslöseri och kommunala skrytprojekt som genomfördes samtidigt som utanförskapet växte.
– Jag tog frågan till nutid. Vilken klass tjänar egentligen på den förda migrationspolitik som lett till utanförskap och kriminalitet?
“we started asking ourselves what was relevant in the daily lives of people. Is radical feminism relevant? No. Is the question of how many genders there are relevant? No. Are tired old arguments on whether the Soviet Union was a worker-led state relevant? No.”
He was upset by wasted tax money and bragadocious projects the local government spearheaded while social exclusion kept growing.
“I brought the question to present day. What class makes money from the immigration policies that have led to exclusion and criminality?”
He’s coined a term for the class of people he says are the main tax money wasters; “transferiat”, as in the macroeconomic concept of transfer payments. these people, he says, just profit from the system without adding value. as examples, he lists “genusvetare, mångfaldsstrateger, HBTQI-certifikatörer [,] i viss mån även journalister (inom public service). Det finns även ett lägre skikt av transferiatet – de bidragsberoende, framför allt den stora massan av arbetslösa invandrare som kommit att hamna i utanförskapsområden”: gender studies graduates, diversity strategists, LGBTQ-certifiers, journalists in publicly funded media, and unemployed immigrants.
…honestly i was with him for a while there. i thought he was gonna go on a tirade against “bullshit jobs”, but instead he went off the deep end. later on he cites “public art” and “community centers in areas where more limmigrants live” as a waste of taxpayer money.
Be careful with being explained politics from other countries, even sourced. If you asked a big part of the french population what are LFI’s politics they’d tell you all sort of horrors that the media baselessly accuses them of simply because they are dangerous to the capitalistic system we live in. The formerly mainstream french “left” hates them too and always has.
Unfortunately more and more media all around the world is owned by more or less hidden oligarch wannabes.
I don’t know swedish politics either, but I wouldn’t trust random strangers on the internet to tell me what they are.
Av vänstern anklagas vi för att vara fascister och av högern anklagas vi för kommunism
Accused of being fascists from the political left and communist from the political right…not exactly a reassuring description IMO.
Calling nonwhite migrants “parasites” is a pretty clear signal which end of the spectrum they’re actually on.
Accused of being Nationalist from the left and being Socialist from the right. What a novel idea. A nEw PoLiTiCaL tHiRd WaY!
So, they’re socialists, only national?
so like, national socialists. who do we know who also called themselves that?
So nobody can agree if they’re far-left or far-right, but everyone agrees they’re far-authoritarian?
