cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/8915892
(original article in Swedish that reported this)
Posting this because I hadn’t heard about it before and I’m probably not the only Mullvad user here, so might as well.
The party claims to stand for a “class-conscious populism” which according to party leader Markus Allard takes inspiration from marxist ideology 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 such as those who, despite having an ability to work, live off social welfare benefits, as well as those who work “made-up services”[…]
The party differs from modern day left-wing parties by seeing the working class as co-dependent with people working in enterprise and business and instead sees the classes that “live off transfers”, as specified, as a large economic net-negative and an obstacle for a functional society.
Their ideology is nonsense fake-marxist revisionism to redirect anger at capitalism and turn it against immigrants and people who need social welfare (though they do back some generally left oriented social policies, their main thing appears to be racism)
Even if you’re comfortable with funding this, it still begs the question of just how trustworthy Mullvad actually is.
I guess this still beats any of the dozens of Israeli VPNs that definitely spy on you, but it’s not great
This isn’t good. It’s also not entirely correct. Mullvad isn’t financing this party directly. One of the owners took his money he made from the company and donated it to the loonies. He could’ve bought crypto with it, spent it in blow maybe, but he didn’t. “Mullvad is financing this party” is not correct. “Your Mullvad fees may have ended up indirectly financing this party” is correct and an ongoing concern. So is their tepid response to the story breaking. I would still advise caution, hammer them with public outrage pressure on the socials, and hope they get rid of the loonie party donor before you bankrupt an otherwise serviceable VPN provider. If that guy is still there in a couple of months, by all means leave.
There is no shortage of c@<%s in the tech sector.
They won’t get rid of him if there is no threat of bankruptcy… “Lets not jump into action maybe they’ll do the right thing” is not a good plan
They can force him out as CEO, that can do nothing about his co-ownership though.
But that’s even less reason to give them money, if he is a co-owner part of the profit directly funds fascism. It’s not just about funding the parties, but having mullvad as the defacto gold standard, continuing to do business with them gives fascists co-ownership over parts of privacy-critical infrastructure. It’s not a serviceable VPN provider if it’s co-owned by fascists??
Yeah, but his donation was something like 72% of the donations to that party by money given. That’s not just a donation; that’s him funding his own private far-right party. And if he wants his own far-right party, it’s probably not just for looks.
This guy co-owns Mullvad. That all Mullvad is doing about it is wringing their hands and saying ‘oh, but it’s his money, there’s nothing we can do’ is, quite frankly, disgusting. It’s his money that he got from your company, in large enough quantities he can go out and buy himself some racists like Phil Knight buying himself a fucking basketball team.
If a lower-level employee makes some shit-ass racist comment on their own time, they tend to get canned immediately. Yet all this asshole gets is Mullvad shaking their heads and saying ‘well, it doesn’t align with our values, but what you gonna do?’ Bullshit.
Well, if he’s the co-founder and the co-owner, the only thing “they” (I assume the 2nd owner/founder) can really do is try to convince him to leave.
What else would you expect? That he shutdowns the company, drop their customers and fire their employees, then restart the same company with a different name without that individual?
That would be a guaranteed lawsuit, and could actually break even more trust form all parties.Or just sells his shares and leaves, alone, so that Mullvad goes from “one co-owner funds a far-right nazi party” to “Mullvad now fully own by a nazi-fanboy”? (again: abandoning employees and customers to the good will of that charming individual).
“Your Mullvad fees may have ended up indirectly financing this party” is correct and an ongoing concern.
Is it really “may have”? Seems pretty clear that they have.
Here’s the fix for you: “Giving your money to Mullvad is like drinking at a Nazi bar. The bar’s great, but it’s full of Nazis”.
Sounds more l ike the owner of the bar is a nazi than the bar being filled with nazis
Feel free to drink at the Nazi owned bar I guess. Be prepared for when they go full Nazi on you and all that information you probably wanted private.
Oh my god, shuuuut uppppp
No, the Mullvad company isn’t sponsoring a nazi party, but the company is owned by 50% of the one who did it, $500k, money gained with this company. This rest for me also at least 50% of trust in this company. Its not the same, if a company with 100 employees has an employee nazi, as when the owner is one. Because this mean, every money which pay the user for an service, 50% serve to support a nazi party. Stop fooling around with “he used his private money”, it’s money he earned with this company, by donations, VPN and services, paid by the users. Brendan Eich was fired by Mozilla for less.
Stop fooling around with “he used his private money”, it’s money he earned with this company, by donations, VPN and services, paid by the users.
What you call fooling around I call a factual distinction. It’s also been pointed out that Mullvad money wasn’t possibly a big bulk of the donation. Because they’re not raking in the dough.
I’m not telling you not to be outraged. If I were a customer of theirs I’d be mad too. You draw your own line and that’s just fine with me. Let me draw mine.
I believe facts matter. Facts like Mullvad didn’t directly fund a Nazi party, but one of their owners did. And it wasn’t per se a Nazi party becausre they are more of the horseshoe persuasion where they try to marry ideas from the extreme right with those from the extreme left, which is an unfortunate trend in European politics right now. And I’ve pointed this out before: the real threat is already in the Swedish parliament as the 2nd largest fraction. They are the Sweden Democrats and they are probably more deserving of the Nazi label.
I understand your point of view, but I can only speak mine. The advance of the far right in Europe and the rest of the world is more than worrying and must be fought, not facilitated. A company must also look at its image in the eyes of the public and show ethics and respect for the customer and user.
Mullvad is undoubtedly a technically good browser with excellent privacy-protecting features, but precisely for this reason it cannot be tolerated that its CEO supports a political party that promotes the exact opposite of what Mullvad claims to defend, because this takes away confidence in the future developments of this browser and what path it will take. The influence of someone who owns 50% of the company is surely not small and the influence and political orientation he has matters, even if it seems a good product.
Eg. Starlink, for sure very usefull to permit the connection in a lot of countries without infrastructure, in catastrophes, in trains, flights, etc. but I see also a worldwide network controlled by one person, Musk. Right populism always use the Honeypot methode for it’s advance.
Be CEO of privacy company
Donate $500k to a right wing party publicly
Insane amount of Nazi sympathizers in this thread. “Aw but poor baby is just the CEO!! It’s not his fault he’s a Nazi! Let him do what he wants!” Freaks.
As far as I’m concerned, ‘liberal’ is the most meaningless word in the dictionary. History has shown me that as long as some white middle-class people can live high on the hog, take vacations to Europe, send their children to private schools, and reap the benefits of their white skin privilege, then they are ‘liberal’. But when times get hard and money gets tight, they pull off that liberal mask and you think you’re talking to Adolf Hitler. They feel sorry for the so-called underprivileged just as long as they can maintain their own privileges.
Assata Shakur
Quite a poignant quote.
Mullvad
Reverse credit card charge
Yeah… About that…
You mailed in cash didn’t you
Kinda their best feature
In the past they let you keep CC on file for monthly payments but now they’re prepay only and they delete CC info after 40 days. I think I prepaid for like a year and half before I knew any of this. Mullvad’s obsession with user privacy is completely unparalleled in 2026.
Monero
Clickbait title. It’s one of the coowners who has donated his personal funds to this party. The other owner and other members of the company disapprove of the decision.
So is the nazi coowner getting ousted soon?
Right now we’re at “Mullvad is part nazi, nazi adjacent, nazi lite, moderately fascist, feudalism-curious” stage.
He owns half the company so I’m not sure if he can be ousted.
The company can be spun out into two.
Let the spun out Nazivad get their own customers separately, if they can.
Otherwise the whole company is now tainted.
Guess where part of your money is going to…
If you buy most products, chances are some portion of it is going to a Nazi sympathizer.
Once you get confirmation of this you have a choice. Free market and all that
Where does he get the money he donates?
From his job? Working for an employer who cannot tell him how to spend his own money.
Who does he work “for”? He’s a co-owner/founder according to most of the comments in her
I sympathize, but. The paradox of tolerance is at play here. We cannot tolerate the intolarent actions from this CEO.
If the rest of the company wants to project an open/free and honest stance. They must root out and remove all intolerance.
Until then, I will not use this company.
Title is incorrect, it’s not Mullvad donating the money but one of the owners.
This is true, but it a co-founder with 50% ownership. Musk has like a 15% ownership in Tesla, yet they are the modern day Nazi car. Surely if half the ownership of a company supports fascists that kind of makes it a racist company.
Where does he get the money he donates?
They even released a statement regarding this.
Even bigger yikes.
So… Is there any VPN provider without controversy?
I think Mullvad was the last one I knew of.
They’re either lying about logging, lying about backdoors, or apparently Nazis?
i would highly recommend ivpn
(recommended by privacyguides.org)AirVPN is awesome, also port forwards are nice for p29p
SOCKS
Windscribe have a good rep. Maybe
That is a really difficult situation to be in, and I don’t envy them. I’m struggling with coming up with a solution to this, when one of your co-founders, that you basically can’t force out if I understand it correctly, is using his own money, he made from the company, but it’s still his own, to go against your mission.
If they can’t convince him to not do that, there’s not much they can do.
I really like Mullvad, it’s the only VPN that I feel kind of safe abiut and trust them, but if a part of my money goes directly to fund extremistic parties, then I simply won’t do that and will be asking for a refund. I really hope they figure something out.
But Mullvad could also react a little better, by emphasizing that they would remove him if they could, and that they are working on a solution. Because it kind of isn’t their fault, and it sucks to be in a position like this. Currently it’s like Tesla or SpaceX saying that they don’t agree with Musk’s values, and that he’s spending his own money they have no control over, as if that was an argument why it’s fiine to buy Tesla or invest into SpaceX.
But unsubscribing from Mullvad is the best thing we can do now, hopefully the co-founder loosing his income will make him reconsider the PR of his personal spendings, and the dropping number will force him to reconsider.
If it actually matters that you have privacy and anonymity it’s probably best to not switch.
You know what’s best for you, but the guilt of knowing one drop of your money goes to someone whom you find repugnant is preferable to losing life or safety.
I was judt thinking about this, especially considering that it’s very probable that most of the money I spend are eventually financing lobyiing and who-knows what else, if you were to track them down simillarly.
But, if it’s true that 75% of the donations the party has received is from the Mullvad co-owner, there is a chance that it would allow them to keep on surviving even when they shouldn’t, and if they manage to get elected (which unfortunately seems to be more and more of a trend), it can cause a lot more harm than a little bit of lost privacy.
I don’t know. I don’t want to stop supporting Mullvad, but if that means also giving a far right party a better chance at surviving, then it sucks.
Whatever you decide, don’t fall into the trap of bearing responsibility for the actions of others.
I can’t keep track of all the assholes. Going to need an asshole tracker soon.
That would be a fun website. Asshole tracker for Companies & Politicians and others?
Could do an Assholes Wiki and make it community contributions lol
Consumers are nothing but fish in a barrel these days
I would love to take my money elsewhere, but… Where? Everywhere else is just as bad or worse. Half the VPN’s are owner by one Israeli billionaire. I’m running out of options here.
i would highly recommend ivpn
(recommended by privacyguides.org)I’m using AirVPN since two years and I’m very happy with them.
That ideology sounds wild lol. Almost literal “national - socialism”?
The issue is rich people using undemocratic power to fund things like this. Which ironically sounds exactly like the “Transferiat” siphoning money and power from VPN users to funnel it into unwanted, fringe channels.
I was just thinking, the “transferiat” sound exactly like the wealthy ownership class
To be fair, much of this could be flak, deliberate distortion and slander by the neoliberal forces in Sweden. You can’t trust the mainstream media not to trash anything that isn’t neoliberal.
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,[4] ending taxpayer funding of what it sees as wasteful sculptures, monuments and art and introducing free dental care.
This all sounds great.
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 I suspect a clear majority of Europeans are also against immigration or reducing how many refugees we take in thanks to fucking imperialist wars by the elite. There is nothing “far right” about this. I’m also for sending refugees back (EDIT: After it’s safe to send them back!) and strictly limiting immigration in my country. The only real issue is that “remigration” is apparently code word for ethnic cleansing.
The larger issue is that this ideology sounds pretty half baked and too simple for the complexity of the current state of things.
Didn’t the swiss banks enrich themselves with Nazi gold?
Sure, it was acceptable in the 1930s. But what does that have to do with what I wrote?
God dammit, I already switched away from Express VPN because they’re owned by Israel, now I gotta switch away from Mullvad too??
i would highly recommend ivpn
(recommended by privacyguides.org)
Nobody using Mullvad is going to have their credit card tied directly to it. Much less are they going to start calling financial institutions and government agencies and tell them they’re a Mullvad user.
You need to get way more subtle with your propaganda, corpos.
Sure lets entrust our privacy with infrastructure owned by a fascist…
clearly you don’t know how Mullvad works
Enlighten me how under a fascist takeover it couldn’t be undermined to track undesirables… even if, the owner is a fascist?! Clearly your life wouldn’t be in danger when tracked by a fascist…
Technically they could be lying about their privacy policy, and technically it’s not impossible that they’ve colluded with the government to lie about police finding nothing in raids, and saying “well they will lie about it because they’re fascists” is myopic and stupid. Moreso than being fascist, they’re fanatical about privacy. Everything runs on RAM. They couldn’t track you if they wanted to
saying “well they will lie about it because they’re fascists” is myopic and stupid.
Why?
Moreso than being fascist, they’re fanatical about privacy
and they will be forever and ever? There’s one move fascists have, coast on good will until it’s time for the rug-pull. A lot of fascists started out genuinely believing in some cause but sooner or later they all turn. What with contradictions sharpening and all
Why?
Because you don’t know anything about the infrastructure of their operation. It’s as yet impossible for them to track traffic through their servers.
and they will be forever and ever?
As long as it’s one guy making personal donations and not the company as a whole, yes
Enlighten me then? Simply calling others stupid and playing coy with your argument isn’t that convincing an argument.
As long as it’s one guy making personal donations and not the company as a whole, yes
that “one guy”? Oh he owns half the company, and we are very happy to run this operation with him don’t worry about him.
Explain to me how you activate an account on Mullvad. Right here.
Don’t Google it. Just explain it.
You create that id number thing and send them money. Do you think that means that your identity is completely secure?
Send them money in what form?
I was planning on sending them cash via mail
Do you write your name and address on the cash you send them?
No
