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.
What VPN do lemmy users recommend? Mullvad founder is funding right wing politics. Proton ceo is praising Trump. PIA has deep ties to Israeli intelligence.
I don’t know about Proton. I don’t judge people by what they say, but by what they do. Mullvad is putting its money where it’s mouth is. It doesn’t surprise me that a lot of people who use Mullvad also use Brave.
IVPN
Maybe AirVPN is an option? By their own words it was started by activists to imrpove anonymity and net neutrality. It is quite a bit less ‘sleek’ than proton or mullvad, but I have found it to work fine (you might have to try several servers before you find one that works for you if you want to get around geoblocking, as some of their IPs appear to have been blocked here and there).
Leaving this recommendation to see if someone replies with news on how they suck as well, because I have not really checked if there were any controversies surrounding them
Considering the far-right push to obliterate privacy, current and historically, it’s a really poor look for a company with a privacy product.
It’s rumoured that Australia will look to banning VPNs next for “protecting the children” after recently mandating proof of age laws to a bunch of services like social media and pornography.
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
Fascism requires support for an authoritarian dictatorship, among other stances. It is not purely “about racial and national purity and hierarchy”. That’s ethno-nationalism. Yes, fascists are ethno-nationalists, but not every ethno-nationalist is a fascist.
And how do you enforce ethnic cleansing? Cause I hate to tell you, but it’s not democratically. Authoritarians simply use democratic methods to shroud legitimacy while ballot spoiling, gerrymandering, or any number of countless methods to undermine said democracy.
If you can’t understand that tearing up citizenship, thereby removing the ability for constituents to vote, is inherently authoritarian, I can’t help you.
In a democracy you just require a (super)majority for everything necessary to be changed and done to achieve anything.
It is of course easier in a dictatorship to achieve ethnic cleansing, but doesn’t require one. Look at Turkey and how they treat the Kurds. Not saying they are the best example of a democracy, but it isn’t a dictatorship by definition.
You don’t need a simple majority when you can have a few judges rewrite the interpretation of the existing laws
It should be obvious that [founder’s] private donation to a political party is not part of [his company’s] values or mission
Riiiiiiiiiight, because it always shakes out like that
So if I use Mullvad, some of that is funding far-right politics?
At this point it’s safer to just assume every purchase you make 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.
People can look up how various grocery store brands fund the republicans here: https://shophowyouvote.com/
Thanks lol. Just learned Cheerios are fascist ;-;
That damn bee; I always knew.
It’s like the whole idea of accumulating as much wealth/power as you can leads to control and suffering of those with less wealth/power.
Yes
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Cool, which ones?
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US
big left wing politiciansAnd who might that be?
They are a troll or a fascist, so any response is going to involve mental illness.
Damn, I was hoping to find a VPN donating to left wing politicians cause that would be dope.
- a troll
- a fascist
- involve mental illness
Porque no los tres?
what an incredibly low effort troll. Mamdani might be the only center-left politician in the US. There are no far-left politicians in the US empire.
Well it doesn’t start with FTX because they didn’t offer a VPN service. Can you name just one then please?
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Yeah it’s weird how these generalizations fall apart when you try to find a single example of a far-left VPN provider but all you can come up with is a years-defunct criminal crypto hedge fund whose “far-left funding” was donating to a middle-right democrat’s election fund.
You named a cryptocurrency company, not a VPN company.
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I’ve heard that one as well from graphene devs on mastodon and I agree that this is not you typical right wing populist. Don’t know if calling him left wing is any more appropriate though
Not as much as the food you eat or the utilities you use, but yes.
Appears to be the case.
It seems so, and also who knows what else, maybe even the far left
No, no, its just the ceo’s personal politics that he donates lots of money get fwrs from his job to.
There’s no equally good VPN company, by a wide margin.
This guy’s a rich “libertarian anarchist” who donated to the new party of a marxist he followed because he wants lower taxes and less immigration.
I don’t really even know what to make of that. Unlike the Proton guy who slobbered on the demented rapist’s bunghole, which I knew exactly what to make of it.
You will excuse Mullvad but demonize Proton… This shit cannot be made up.
Olympic level mental gymnastics…
Please explain. I don’t have much background on either. Are they different? The same? How?
He’s a fascist painted with a faded red star, but even the Nazi flag used a bit of red. For the well informed, it’s actually a classic.
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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!
Is IPVN owned by a non-profit foundation?
Nope they’re owned by a single person. I hope he’ll be more responsible. If you know of any non-profit vpn providers let me know! Happy to switch again
I had hoped you had any examples since you pointed out that it’s a for-profit company :/ Can’t do IPVN either than since who knows what the owner uses their money for.
All I know is the profits of Mullvad go to bad causes. Yes IVPN aren’t perfect but the services are so similar the choice should be obvious. Until a better alternative comes along i’m going to use the one that does less harm.
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
Damn that’s the only thing they don’t offer compared to the others 💔
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….’
It means “I want to do bad things without consequences” just like free speech absolutist means “I want to say bad things and no one is allowed to call me names”.
In the US I’ve been saying “Libertarian is a Republican who wants to smoke weed.” But seeing as they’re not villianizing it much anymore the Libertarians really don’t have a talking point left in the country.
Totes.
Libertarians are the most laughable spineless morons that I can think of. 99% hypocrisy and 1% innovation.
Wealth needs limits
I always say there should be a hard cutoff at a million a year and you should be taxed 100% at anything over that.
Even from a capitalist perspective this makes sense. Money pooling at the top is money not moving through the economy; 100% taxes encourage reinvestment and philanthropy to avoid the tax.
I’m not educated here - how is the money not moving through the economy? Billionaires and trillionaires surely keep their money in a bank / investment accounts right?
I’m not going to find them now, but if you’re interested, there are a lot of studies that look at how money moves through the economy and which dollars are more impactful. While dollars saved do get reinvested in a roundabout way, their economic impact is pennies on the dollar compared to direct spending or investment into business. It’s just far better for any market economy to prevent dollars from pooling into savings beyond simple prudence and is far better to put them directly to work via spending.
I think it would be more effective to have a hard wealth (both liquid and non-liquid assets) cutoff of somewhere between $10-50 million rather than a cap on an annual income.
Both
Wealth need not exist at all.
The point of wealth is heyying around limits. You cannot continue to have fungible personal wealth without corruption. It doesn’t even work on a hypothetical philosophical level.
Yeah, literally 99.999% of products you buy in 2026 fund right wing fascism, and most of it you can’t escape because they own the entire supply chain.
Ain’t capitalism fun?
It really is a matter of degree, though. Even fancy perfume has horse piss in it. It doesn’t mean you might as well wallow in the pigpen.
I have already quit my subscription. Haven’t taken the time to find an alternative yet. I’m stocked up on media for the time being.
Do they offer subscriptions now? I thought they are only pre-paid
I am currently testing out AirVPN. Seems pretty good so far.
Switched to IVPN, but might make another switch to NymVPN: https://f-droid.org/packages/net.nymtech.nymvpn
I switched to NymVPN from Mullvad, and I honestly don’t notice a difference in speeds or connectivity
I’m quite happy
Could you explain why? I’ve been looking at switching to iVPN but I haven’t discovered enough to make me feel comfortable.
iVPN has veen great so far (aside from not being able to use it on my TV due to the lack of a TV layout), but NymVPN provides even more protections and anonymity based on The Hated One’s research:
I wanted nym to be good but I had constant connection problems on android. Cachyos it was more stable.
Good to know. Hopefully it gets more stable!
Good to know. Thanks!
I can vouch for IVPN. Made the switch when I heard the news and its been pretty seamless. Generated an account number and funded it with monero. There’s an fdroid app too! Service has been really good so far
I found OVPN to be basically the same thing. They’ve actually proven in court that they have no way of logging customer activity.
The Örebro Party leader is a communist. So not quite far right. And they don’t even have a party program right now. They are still working on it for the 2026 election.
that’s what i thought, then i read what they actually want from an interview allard did in 2022. he’s basically invented a new class he calls the “transferiat”, which he claims is the main leech on society. the members of this class? public servants, journalists, and people on social security (allard even specifies “immigrants” there). he wants to get rid of this class, in order to achieve smaller government, “higher quality” reporting, and fewer welfare queens.
that’s a textbook right-conservative agenda.
yes, karl marx famously wrote about the deportation of migrants in his book “mein kampf”
Well, that’s what the leader says.
https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Allard
“Han har istället beskrivit sin ideologiska hemvist som populism och nationalism på marxistisk grund”
Populism + nationalism based on marxism.
Allard har sedan bildandet av partiet allt mer tagit avstånd från den svenska vänstern, då han menar att den avlägsnat sig från arbetarrörelsens ursprungliga ideal. Han har istället beskrivit sin ideologiska hemvist som populism och nationalism på marxistisk grund, vilket han menar inte går att placera in på den moderna vänster–höger-skalan.
Mellan 2022 och 2025 medverkade Allard på den av Sverigedemokraterna grundade mediekanalen Riks. Det första avsnittet av programmet med namnet “Allard” hade premiär 5 november 2022. Fokus var att diskutera dagsaktuella samhällsfrågor och intervjuer med andra samhällsdebattörer.
He himself claims that you can’t really place their politics on the scale, because he picks ideas from both sides. Yeah, their politics are messy, but they have very fascist and white-supremacist overtones, and they gladly work with nazis. So I don’t personally care for trivial bickering about definitions here.
Dude basically read Ayn Rand and thought “whoa yeah, that’s the shit”, when in actuality it’s just shit.
Honestly, it’s like when right-wingers want everything privatised and scream that taxation is theft, but they’re totally happy with having taxes pay for their stuff. Just because they like to benefit from socialist policies doesn’t mean that they’re socialists.
yeah and the nazis named themselves national socialists so i dont see your point
Why do you even bother when you don’t know anything about the party? The leader was kicked out of the youth part of the most leftist party in the parliament in 2014. And he was kicked out for being too extreme left (he had supported the Revolutionary Front). And he started a pod with a guy who had also been kicked out for the same reason.
What’s your argument here exactly? That having once held left wing views means all future positions can’t possibly be right wing despite all evidence to the contrary?
There was once this guy Mussolini who was a fervent communist iirc…
Seem to recall he got a bit rightish in later life
Well. Its well known they have some left options and a lot of far right opinions. Doesn’t matter if he once identified as a extreme leftist. He is now supporting way more far right opinions. It’s just facts. Do as you want with the facts.
political beliefs of people aren’t static. it’s been 12 years
