Saying he ‘made a donation’ is downplaying his role. It makes it sound like he’s just some guy doing what everyone else does to participate in politics…
The 2025 donation accounted for 72% of the party’s total income last year. … According to data collected by DonationWatch, 2025 was the most lucrative year in the party’s history, netting a total of 5.58 million SEK. For comparison, the party received just 202,000 SEK in total donations throughout 2024.
Just the annual interest on his donation is more that all of their other donations for the entire year combined.
He didn’t just make a donation, he is practically their sole source of financing.
Oh shit, that has got to be the poorest political party I’ve heard of 🤣
Bankrupt morally and financially 🤷♂️
The emigration stuff makes the rest of their positions so confusing.
The leader was allegedly kicked out of the left party for liking anti fascists on Facebook, and they want free preschool, 30 hour work weeks, and a bunch of other social things.
But then the remigration bullshit. Dumb.
It’s basically just one really annoying dude stirring up shit in the municipal politics of Örebro.
Make no mistake, he’s a massive piece of shit still
It seems quite small indeed
Their colors are literally red, black and white 😭
I mean, yeah they are a shit party, but isn’t smaller and local parties kinda what we want? I’d rather have a 20 small parties in parliament than 2 big ones with some on the side lines.
This is like saying sure he murdered the guy with his bare hands, but doesn’t society need more face to face human interaction?
No, I just don’t think the size of the party is the thing we should criticise/make fun of it for. They’re clearly influential enough to snap up a big sponsor, and will now decide to actually try and run for parliament. UKIP was never large enough to get elected into parliament afaik, but they still managed to influence politics enough to cause brexit.
These small parties are not up for a parliamentary position though. They are only active in their municipality. There are 8 parties in the Swedish parliament (though it looks like it’s going to be 7 after the election in fall).
I’m not following the polls at all. Who is falling out, the liberals?
Hah, yeah. They are at ~2% or so (with 4% being the minimum needed to get seats)
Damn. I can’t recall when they didn’t make the bar last.
I mean it is funny - the incest bit I mean - but it kind of epitomises why I don’t really follow politics anymore. Our leaders aren’t serious, and for the past few decades it’s devolved into a spectacle. It stresses me the fuck out.
The past week I’ve lived with my windows wide open, so I need to take particular care that I don’t just… tip out of them. Our idiot politics don’t help in that regard.
You’re forgetting the 12% exception, but they’d probably need an even larger amount than that.
Did noone tell them they can just apply for funding in russia?
5,58 million SEK is around 600 thousand dollars. 202 thousand SEK is slightly more than 20 thousand dollars.
Mullvad co-CEO Fredrik Strömberg confirmed that neither Mullvad VPN AB, its parent company Amagicom AB, nor its sister company Tillitis AB played any role in supporting the political party.
It doesn’t matter if the company itself was directly involved or not, the money came from the company, and from its’ customers.
yeah it’s like saying Elon is only a piece of shit on his free time so it’s okay
edit:
pissof shitI’m not taking side here, but to be fair, Elon Musk is a shitty person doing shitty things both professionally and private. Mullvad VPN is at least only doing good things!
With that said. I have stopped using Mullvad VPN for now. We’ll see how this all plays out.
gonna get downvoted to hell here but making EVs and charging infrastructure is a good thing. also rooftop solar and batteries.
still, fuck nazi elon.
edit: this isn’t even about “credit” for developing the tech or whatever. even if we all agree this stuff was going to happen with or without elon, the Tesla business is still putting these products on the market. That is good, just like Mullvad and VPN. They didn’t invent VPN or anything, they are just one (good) provider.
The only issue with Tesla is that the quality of their cars is mediocre at best, while you’re paying premium, and that Tesla is the most childish and obstinate company to work with.
We have something called Råd & Rön’s Blacklist, which is respected Swedish consumer magazine’s list of products to avoid. Tesla is one of the brands that’s listed there. Partly because of the poor quality of the cars and partly because they don’t follow the rulings from the National Board for Consumer Complaints here in Sweden.
And they don’t give a **** about insurance companies either. If something happens to your Tesla, you’re on your own buying a new one yourself. You can forget about getting any sort of help from Tesla.
The cars since 2020 have been decent quality. What you are paying for is an EV with good range and good power. Tesla definitely pushed the U.S. ev adoption ahead by a number of years.
I’m curious about how that board works - is it a judicial system that other car manufacturers follow? What kind of rulings have they made against Tesla? I found that Tesla follows their own warranty quite well, and after that I don’t think any a car manufacturers will fix stuff for free.
And what support do you expect to get regarding insurance? You can buy a bew car like anyone, can’t you?The cars since 2020 have been decent quality. What you are paying for is an EV with good range and good power. Tesla definitely pushed the U.S. ev adoption ahead by a number of years.
I guess everything is relative. Tesla is still a crappy car in terms of quality here, with tons of unresolved issues with faulty cars that Tesla refused to help their customers with.
I’m curious about how that board works - is it a judicial system that other car manufacturers follow?
Råd & Rönis is an independent, non-profit consumer magazine owned by the Swedish Consumer Agency. Their funding comes from subscriptions and government grants (no advertising and no corporate money). They test products, expose bad companies and protect consumers. Their “Black List” (Svarta Listan) is highly influential, and being on it can destroy sales completely.
Customers can file a complaint at The National Board for Consumer Disputes (ARN), a government-run arbitration(?) service. Their decisions are not legally binding, but companies that ignore them get publicly shamed (and often blacklisted by Råd & Rön). Tesla has ignored basically every single case. Any remotely serious company here in Sweden comply with ARN. We take ARN very seriously here.
What kind of rulings have they made against Tesla?
Our law is equal for everyone. We don’t care if you’re some local dude selling hotdogs or Elon Musk selling Teslas.
I found that Tesla follows their own warranty quite well […]
That’s the issue. Their warranty basically means that they ignore you and will fuck you over, even if the issue is their own fault. People have ended up with repair costs close to what a new car costs, and even if it’s Teslas fault, they refuse to do shit.
[…] and after that I don’t think any a car manufacturers will fix stuff for free.
Of course they have to, if the issue is their own fault.
Sounds like a good system. But I guess it only works if people pay attention to the blacklist so it’s a good threat since it’s not enforceable. I haven’t heard of Tesla not honoring drivetrain issues under warranty here in Canada. They wouldn’t do a second windshield replacement on my wife’s T3 because what they said was evidence of a rock chip, but that was kinda fair.
The cars since 2020 have been decent quality
https://www.adac.de/news/tuev-report-2026/
German source, since murica doesn’t have mandatory safety inspections. Literally no other car brand has a higher failure rate than Tesla, and the car with the highest failure rate was the Model Y, which released in 2022
Interesting. Seems that most the failures are the breaks because the pads get rusty with non-use because of the regenerative breaking. The Tesla manuals say to use the breaks fully every once in a while, but of course people don’t read the manual. And it just make then grunchy - they work fine. The suspension issues are real and I think the problem is that they start to go but it’s not obvious. Tesla will change them in warranty no problem but you have to notice the extra play and sounds, which is quite subtle. I wish we had annual safety inspections in Canada, they only do that for older cars.
I stopped reading what you wrote after your first sentence. There are so many other issues than that with Tesla, what dimension are you from?
Rooftop solar is definitely not something Musk can take any credit for.
EVs maybe, but charging infrastructure that he made proprietary rather than using the open standard is not especially worthy of praise.
Musk hasn’t done any of those things. People who are actually smart did them and then he pretended to do them.
I mean yeah, obviously. But Musk is very obviously excellent at marketing, and there’s an argument to be made that it was thanks to his marketing that Tesla became as popular as it did, and that that helped pull up the EV market more broadly.
Marketing from marketers that he hired. He did fuck all.
Not even EVs. The work was getting done by researchers improving electric motors and batteries. As soon as the technology was viable Elon jumped on it and marketed himself as the person behind it all. Same goes for PayPal which he stole credit for, rockets that people already worked decades on, tunnels that are just bad metros, and machine learning (AI) that people were already doing since the 70’s and only recently had breakthroughs because of the increased ability to feed it data en masse.
The only credit he should get is having the power and charisma to capitalize on the work of others. He’s a Thomas Edison and not a Nikola Tesla.
Calling him Thomas Edison is giving him far too much credit. Edison may have been a self aggrandizing asshole, but he also did have a few accomplishments to his name. Musk is a glorified venture capitalist, only instead of just taking a chunk of the profits he buys the whole company so he can steal credit for the company’s achievements. Elon Musk has never created a single thing in his life. He has in fact been a net negative as every company he has ever been involved with would have been better off without Musk’s “help”.
Elon Musk didn’t do any of that though. Engineers did.
Those things were happening before him and continue DESPITE him. If you get downvoted it’s because you insinuated he had anything to do with that.
He didnt make shit. He saw there was opportunity and ran with it, now that he has it sustainabikity is nowhere close to his goals.
The solar tiles suck The battery is a whitelabelled product The boring company was strategic interference to stop public infrastructure development.
Elon is just a propaganda machine (see his “in 4 or 5 years we’ll have datacenters in space” bullshit, or all the other things that he promised but it didn’t happen), a shame so many people fall for it.
I mean, to be fair, it was the engineers and founders who have done a lot of the work. They deserve the credit for making good products. Not Elon. He just profits off of them and the labor of the engineers.
It is very unfortunate that ev’s and elon are linked in any way, he is not positive marketing.
Yes, but I do not give Musk credit for recognizing a good thing and then taking it from Tesla’s founders.
Yeah but it’s not exactly the south African doing those things, if anything they are doing them despite him.
An issue for those of us in the southern hemisphere, where mullvad is the only decent choice… but one of their founders is clearly not decent.
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They are? How?
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Monero is anonymous, so it makes sense.
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Oh! You mean crypto currencies, not crypto. I was confused there for a bit. :D
A commonly known US analog is the Chik-Fil-A restaurant chain. They are proudly Christian and got tons of flak for donating to “traditional family” organizations that spread gay hate and so on.
They stopped, but the owner still personally donates. So every dollar you spend there still fuels those hate groups. It just takes a slightly different path.
So the question isn’t “is the company bad,” it’s “what is your money funding?”
I still call it Bigot Chicken to this day. My family who enjoys it is annoyed by me harping on the company’s general suckitude.
Too bad.
Yeah gee, shame on you for complicating their fast food gluttony with your ethical sensibility!
Funny thing about Chic Fil A is that unlike McDonald’s it’s not a BDS target
So you believe that customers of a company should have a say how the staff uses their wages?
You have that backwards. Customers of a company get to decide whether or not they want to give that company their money for any reason they fucking please
I’d also argue that no one would care if this were some mid-level manager making a donation. This is the owner of a company, not “staff.”
I believe consumers have an ethical obligation to exercise their right to discontinue business with a company when its owners do something unethical.
Legally? No.
Morally? Yes. Customers give their say as to whether or not they want to give their money to some specific company every single time they engage in a business transaction. There is also nothing wrong with telling others to make the same consideration.
Morally? Yes.
How do you figure? I’d argue the opposite and state morally it’s quite litterally nobody’s business what any private person spends their money on. Especially when you’re talking about people outside the c-suite.
It’s also the only thing that is remotely managable. Otherwise, where does that crap start and end?
We are talking about some nationalist populists now (and more than “a donation”), but what about a membership of a more moderate political party? Or say your customer base for any reason is in large part Vegan, should you tell your employee’s to stop buying meat? Should they stop taking money from the non-vegan customers? How is anyone going to navigate this?
Are you contending unless otherwise specified, people should be mandated to continue spending money with companies?
I’m allowed to do business or not do business with any company for any reason I like. Cofounder funding a political party with one of their goals being to brutalize immigrants? No thanks. Contractor wearing a company shirt was rude to me on the elevator? I’ll check the competition. Maybe I just don’t like the color of their logo?
I’m allowed to define my morals and what I would consider violating those morals would be with monetary support and no half baked slippery slope argument is going to change that.
What exactly is the allowed reasons for doing or not doing business with people?
Are you contending unless otherwise specified, people should be mandated to continue spending money with companies?
No. I’m just of the opinion that I’m in no way obliged to disclose to you what I spend my money on, just because I work somewhere you spend money on.
What exactly is the allowed reasons for doing or not doing business with people?
Anything, including having no reason at all, obviously.
The co-founder publicly stated he made the donation on social media. What made him obliged to disclose this? He seems rather proud of it, in fact.
As a result, people feel they may have a moral obligation to not funnel money to him. Your stance also doesn;t really line up with your examples like
Or say your customer base for any reason is in large part Vegan, should you tell your employee’s to stop buying meat? Should they stop taking money from the non-vegan customers? How is anyone going to navigate this?
You don’t mention the specific problem you have with this, which would be mandated disclosure. By your own words, this is perfectly fine since people can chose the reasons “Anything, including having no reason at all, obviously.” to not do business with someone so I’m not sure why it’s a slippery slope to you.
No. I’m just of the opinion that I’m in no way obliged to disclose to you what I spend my money on, just because I work somewhere you spend money on.
That’s not what you said though. I don’t think anyone is arguing that employees of a company are obligated to disclose their spending habits, that would just be ludicrous. However, if that information was available or if the company itself made donations/purchases it’s perfectly reasonable as a customer to decide not to support that kind of behavior by continuing to do business with that company.
Just as one example Chick-fil-A is rather famously anti-lgbtq and regularly donates part of their profits to anti-lgbtq organizations. As a consumer it’s entirely reasonable and moral to refuse to do business with them in order to reduce the money being funnelled to morally repugnant organizations.
That’s not what you said though.
Where do you feel I’ve deviated from this point exactly?
Keep in mind that this is the question at the top of this particular thread we are responding to:
So you believe that customers of a company should have a say how the staff uses their wages?
To which loke responded, among other things:
Morally? Yes.
To which I responded what you then replied to.
I’m not quite sure where you see space for interpretation, but I feel i’ve been pretty solid with my point.
Co-founder. Very large contribution. Very unsavoury political party.
On one hand, no, they shouldn’t, on the other hand they’re free to voice their opinion and choose a different service if this is the breaking point.
Problem is, it’s hard to find a good VPN service that doesn’t fuck with alt right chuds and isn’t US based.
Try being in the southern hemisphere and trying to achieve those goals… servers are scarcer here.
Time for me to reassess ivpn, and airvpn I guess
I’m tired boss……
Just when you think you find good companies to support they end up being run by shitbags.
Ok, where to next for my VPN needs?
You don’t have to agree with the chef in politics to enjoy their food.
Acting like that zealously would make you quickly run out of options if you actually talked to most chefs.
There’s a difference between a chef having an opinion and a high-ranking decision maker having an opinion and the money to amplify it.
If the chef thinks he shouldn’t have to make food for immigrants, that’s too bad. He’ll have to do his job anyway. If the CEO thinks his establishment shouldn’t serve immigrants and donates to politicians that promise to let him segregate his diner, that might actually have an impact far greater than the chef’s opinion.
And contributing money to shitbags allows them to keep funding terrible values. See Musk.
True but the only thing these fuckers understand the minus to their wallet.
It’s more a question of “know where your money is going.” You can stick your head in the sand and pretend not to know if you wish, but don’t presume to lecture others who won’t.
"Absolute power corrupts absolutely ", unfortunately. I heard that studies have shown the neurophysiology of a person changes the longer they are in power and influence.
That’s interesting, but did they control for becoming a raging K-head?
I think the response makes it obvious that a company is not it’s co-CEO, and a co-CEO is not a company.
Granted a tiny amount of your fees may make their way to a political party you vehemently oppose, but I think you’re also supporting a lot of other people in the organisation that are on your side.
It’s not a “tiny” amount of money, this dude is the CEO who makes all of the money in the company and any money going to Nazis is problematic especially when the Nazis in question are almost fully funded by this CEO and yes the CEO is the face and moral driver of a company.
Pretty ironic saying the company supports free speech when the biggest money maker is bankrolling a group that specifically gasses free speech and I doubt the other working there have even a sliver of speech that the CEO does.
Before your fee gets into a CEOs hands it pays for people’s salaries and the costs of the company. That’s what I mean by a tiny amount. It’s only what’s left after that that the CEO can benefit from.
There is no such thing as an ethical corporation. I’m going to tell you now, if you cannot ever compromise then learn subsistence farming as soon as you can.
All private financing of political parties and politicians everywhere must stop.
Just as religion and state must be separated so must politics and money. If you hold more than $10 million in assets you don’t get to influence politics. It’s one or the other, not both.
i mean, that’s not quite how it worked for me. politics (at least the kind i did) is basically getting the people with $10 million or more in assets to donate to and get involved with their communities. we had to trade some favors (there are a few musicians on the board who lend their services for such instances. most of the time it was that, once or twice it was “teach my fuckup kid how to work”), but we got funding for homelessness services.
if we couldn’t trade those favors, we wouldn’t have any homeless shelters in my county. they ran off grants mostly (during democrat administrations. during republican administrations, we ran off hope and loan forgiveness), but they can’t expand without extraordinary help. which unfortunately takes politicking (which i hate, but they wanted me doing it)
Then your state is not capable of taxing those with money to extract the value it needs to run said country…
Why do we need private money to fix public things because the politic-people can’t be bothered to look anywhere but the next donation goal.
This isnt a donation but a “Pretty please, pay me a standard contractor rate in the disguise of a ‘donation’”.Man I hate this illusionary and superficial bullshit
the taxes weren’t changing, but the grants dried up. yet you blame the taxes.
it’s like you’re a one trick pony. figure out some other thing to harp on
Giving tax money so politicans can market themselves needs to stop. We all here understand how crowdfunding works, it would work just as well with political parties.
The funding they receive from their own members should be enough.
The state financing parties is pretty valid and is practiced in many countries.
For example in Germany parties get paid around 1 € per vote received in elections.
millions in assets
Rich people and corporations will always be able to use their money to influence politics towards their interests.
Influencing politics works in other ways besides direct donations. The rich can put money into:
- media
- interest groups
- education
- studies
- events
- scholarships
- NGOs
Influencing voters to support your desired policies works well.
Then there’s of course the promise of investments, if policies are changed to your interests. In the simplest case this is a local government changing zoning, building infrastructure, softening environmental or noise regulations in order to for an investor to build a factory. This in turn brings money, employment, and tax revenue to the local government.
Instead of direct donations, a politician can be hired to give a speech somewhere.
Or less directly, hire the politician’s child into a well paying position.
Promising a politician a well paid job for their time outside government is of course also a popular way.
Of course you can regulate all of that in various ways to make it more difficult or at least more transparent.
Its the last remnant of the various property owning/landed gentry/aristocracy control of government. They had to give up their exclusive right to sit in court and then “democratic” government, and then their exclusive right to vote.
They are holding on to money-as-influence, trying to convince us its fair because everyone can make donations (you get a great tax receipt!!). However, even donation limits are mainly just a way to cover up their thumbs on the scale, because all they require the rich to do is spread out their money.
“I don’t like co-owning a nazi bar.” Well, boohoo, grow a spine and do something about it.
lol. Yes.
I will sign up for Mullvad tomorrow if he actually does something meaningful about it.
I haven’t even looked up the price, but I’ll keep my word.
Only I won’t have to, because the odds are this guy is another spineless piece of shit.
I’m not at the point where this outweighs the reasons I picked mullvad yet. And the other cofounder’s statement does at least give me hope that it might work itself out in a way I can accept before my current term is finished.
That being said, I’m not sure I can give money to the company when someone is profiting from that money and spending part of it on a political organization that expressly espouses a stance I believe to be harmful and dangerous. And it isn’t like you can pirate a VPN, so it differs significantly from when actors or musicians do stupid shit.
That being said, I also don’t think that using mullvad would be something other people would be obligated to avoid just because the CEO donated to a small and shitty political party. By itself, it isn’t something so bad that it’s possible to point to a customer and do more than inform them of the donation and maybe give them links to see for themselves that it’s a shitty party. Or, at least that it’s a party with some really shitty platforms.
But the guy needs to show a major shift in how he donates before I’ll renew.
He didn’t just donate though, he basically funded it single handed. A quick read about the party suggests that the person in charge is seriously unhinged.
He needs to be bought out of mullvad.
Just a rich person trying to get proto fascist powers. Yeah you wait a bit, but I won’t and I hope it’s the end of his company and career.
Good company though, very rare.
Given the poor alternatives, I may fall back on the utilitarian argument. Yes the guy is donating to evil, but it’s a closet full of evil clowns who aren’t accomplishing anything. So my money is briefly passing through evil without much consequence. And back to the lack of good alternatives…
The party is using this money to push their reach hard. It’s hard to use social media in Sweden without coming across clips of Markus Allard doing an “epic takedown” of another local politician or ranting with righteous fury against some waste of taxpayer money and the message is resonating with a lot of voters, for a lot of them the Örebro Party just seems like the “common sense” choice. There is a strong possibility that they will make it into parliament at this fall’s election and they would not have been able to have this reach without this funding.
“I like this burger made by fascists. I’m going to keep eating this burger, I don’t care where it came from or where my money buying the burger goes to.”
So many comments here sound like this, geez. Same people saying “we can be friends, can’t we, even if our politics differ?” Morality and respecting humans isn’t politics. And no. We can’t.
Also, yes, enforcing racial and national purity (remigration) is, in fact, fascist ideology. Get over it. It’s not extreme, it’s calling a spade a spade. https://lemmy.zip/comment/27359847
Also it’s a damn VPN. Pick another one. It’s not even like they can use the excuse that it’s the best in the field (still not an excuse but loads better than, I just “like” it)
A very small percentage of vpns can be classed as decent, especially if you are in the southern hemisphere. I requested my refund from mullvad today, my replacement option is?
AirVPN and IVPN are both fine. I don’t know why your hemisphere should matter aside from straight up being blocked so kind of hard for me to recommend without knowing that.
The vast majority of vpn servers are in the northern hemisphere, a very, very long way away from Australia
Servers in Australia only make a certain amount of sense due to our fascist governments internet restrictions ie: connecting to an Australian server and using social media = having to supply ID to that social media platform. While this does not apply to all social media platforms, it is expected to in time. (the restrictions only came in last year). I’m expecting them to try to ban vpns in future as well, but thankfully they are morons.
airvpn is possibly feasible via their cli suite, but their gui that looks like it comes from 1997 and lacks split tunnelling, its also AUR, not official repos. I would definitely prefer gui, and not having to f around with a manual install etc. Been there, done that in the past.
ivpn currently failing to install on my system (not something that has occurred previously), and they do have a lack of servers. They have 1 server listed in Malaysia, and 1 in South Africa. 99% of their servers are in the northern hemisphere.
Given a base speed of approx 100Mbps here, it doesn’t take much of a drop these days to be noticeable. Previous connections via proton, and then via mullvad showed northern hemisphere servers, and even some southern hemisphere servers to be a bad idea.
New Zealand is the sweet spot, for now.
I have spent the day looking into alternate vpns again, and airvpn and ivpn are the only 2 that even come to close to ticking the boxes, just as they did when I was looking last year.
Mullvad was the only one that ticked all of the boxes Decent amount of servers, and locations. Good linux gui (now on official repos) Good android gui (f-droid) Split tunnelling on linux and android Browser extensions (speed hit, but really handy) No logs
Which one? The Pro-Israel vpn at PIA? The one thats Pro-Trump at ProtonVPN? NordVPN?
The other respectable option besides mullvad is ivpn
AirVPN seems to be the go-to for torrenting, and RiseUp exists but I don’t know how good it is
Air VPN was good for torrenting for years but most of the servers in torrent friendly countries are pretty full and slow these days.
I had them from 2020 until last fall. Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of good options if you want port forwarding.
For torrents specifically, I would suggest getting some friends together to rent a seedbox or VPS on a torrent friendly provider. You may have total monthly bandwidth limits, but you have much better speed because p2p works so much better with a publically routable IP and open ports anyway.
AirVPN and IVPN are both great options.
The irony of these holier-than-thou lemmy folks using a term like “calling a spade a spade”
“be 100% pure, organic, free-range, antifascist like me, otherwise we cant be friends or have discussions at all!!!”
i mean, while there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism, why does it seem like so many people are trying their hardest to rack up the most unethical consumption? Like there’s a counter somewhere or something idk.
that was rhetorical, i know why. fucking cern weasels.
Then do something by promoting alternatives,
https://www.xda-developers.com/replaced-entire-proton-subscription-with-free-private-apps/
You’re absoluetly right, and thank you, I’ll be using that link in my personal life.
As for VPN alternatives, as we know, not many have faced a raid by authorities like Mullvad, which does speak to the fact that they weren’t collecting user data. However, that may be only a matter of time in our increasingly surveiled world -
ProtonVPN - has its own controversies (CEO may be right-wing in supporting Republicans in the US) but has stood up to legal action previously
And, while potentially biased, there is a google doc users from reddit made to compare many of the options listed here and more.
Hey just FYI you wouldn’t be saying any of this unless you knew about the donation. What grocery store do you shop at?
Farmers markets and some local shops we have around us.
There is no middle ground to be had with Nazis. It’s us or them. If the Nazi won’t leave Mullvad, then I will leave as a customer. Simple as
Where are the nazis? Are you talking about the leninist party ÖP as nazis?
I think that is the modern use of the word “Nazi”, best translated with “i don’t like them”
Yes, but this is super dangerous. I have seen young boys in my politcal party (liberal conservative) basically stand guard for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Active_clubs because “well the left calls everything nazi, including us. So these guys probably wants the same as us. And we on the right needs to stand together.”
Ironically rhetoric like this is in fact normalizing the word nazi, and has more become a word to describe a group that the left doesn’t like. Rather than a fascist leaning party.
Private wealth is a mistake
Racist co-founder. Let’s just start calling a spade a spade. He’s a racist.
“donation”? this is called lobbying. And it should be illegal.
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Sounds like a seriously bad argument against laws…
“You’re saying I can only murder people in secret? I thought this was America.”
good, then make the punishment heavy enough so that even if a few are caught, they are made examples of. I am thinking if the illegal lobbying money is higher than a certain amount he is forced to step down and the company is run by a board of truestees for a year. Will they be able to find ways around it? Sure they are resourceful and have an army of lawyers shamelessly trained at finding loopholes, but it will be much harder than now which is basically a walk in the park for them.
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where political parties receive funds from the state - makes them dependable and controllable by the state.
Lol, what so you think its easier to implement a fair support scheme for political parties through private means than govermental means? You prefer political parties be dependent on whims of private companies who only make these donations with strings attached? You think donations don’t make parties controllable by their donors if they are private? There is simply no logic to this statement.
I am sure you are gonna make an argument along the lines of “but look what if all these donations depended on the current US goverment, surely it couldn’t be worse than a private company”. That means you are missing the big picture and how Trump got into goverment in the first place. Pointing at a government that is so shit because it has million strings attached to other entities including zionist lobbies and tech giants and then saying being dependent on goverment for election funds is dangerous is just bad logic. It is also quite delusional to think that one could have a fair donation scheme where interest of private companies are involved. Lobbying has been the menace of democracy for well over a century.
Also the very fact that politicial parties need on the order of hundereds of millions of dollars for campaigning is already outrageous enough. Things like super PACs is just another loophole to get the party with more connections in power. All of these can be much better regulated with laws and not letting private companies run rampant on politics.
What company? Daniel Berntsson used his personal funds.
All you are doing with this statement is you are pointing at a loophole. Does not matter, personal funds can still be used to do lobbying for a company. So whatever stricter implementations one should come up with it should try to cover and punish loopholes like this to reduce frequency of it happening.
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Hmm calling a direct quote from you a made up statement… Seems like you have some issues to sort out.
Hey, so long as you don’t use X, any Meta product, Google, or Amazon, (or any Musk-infected garbage, obvs), or Protonmail then sure, cancel Mullvad and trash talk the guy silly.
However. I very much doubt that’s the case.
If it’s not the case, that means this is performative. a.k.a. Bullshit.
I hope Mullvad buys him out, distances themselves as far as possible. But they are far from the only tech company with some right wing cunt mixed up with them. If you’re gonna be pure you gotta go full-stack FOSS and a lot of us aren’t there yet. So let’s not pretend like all of us are.
This is not an all or nothing situation, people can criticise this for what it is, even if they’re using any of the products/companies mentioned by you. Navigating a tech-fascist ecosystem is difficult and every criticism here is valid and important.
(Not using any of the aforementioned products/companies btw)
This is a bad attitude. It’s like saying being vegetarian is performative if you aren’t full vegan. And for the record, I use Mullvad (for now), I don’t use any of the other services you mentioned, and I am vegan ;)
Loving the “hey, man, you’re completely wrong! But yes i agree” replies
And all you mfers were on about Andy Yen making a single tweet glazing Gail Slater.
Turns out lots of people can be shitty at once.
It also wasent a single tweet. It was tweets/comments plural, with him also talking about how the GOP was immune from the influence of big tech (ultra mega LOL) and would take them to task (a stunningly, knee slappingly stupid statement), that the GOP was the new “party of the little guy (holy fucking shit was that tone deaf),” then him using right wing phrasing and talking points to defend himself before finally defaulting to the same defense as Mullvad just did. “We are a political company that should not say political things, I.e. we have shitty political opinions that will cost us money once people find out about them so we will shut up now.”
The proton CEO has not once apologized or said he was wrong about the Trump admin, even after they fired Gail Slater in the first year, the person he praised in his first effusive tweet about how great the incoming Trump admin was.
That an edited timeline that leaves out many of his Reddit comments, but it still doesnt paint him in a good light.
Everything he said about the Trump admin was wrong flat out, and not once has he acknowledged it. A very convenient stance he took, praising them and now opting to “not say anything.” Its almost like that just leaves the praise of the GOP with no rebuttal from Proton.
Hilarious, isn’t it?
Wikipedia - is as always - doing a great job at gathering info and they wrote down what the party’s policies are.
IMHO what they propose makes no sense:
- (Massively) cut taxes
- Reimmigration
- Reduce the normal work week by 25%
How is that economy supposed to work? Where do you get the money from to finance this? Who should offset the missing work?
A $500k donation can bankroll your party for some time but certainly not an entire country…
They are chasing votes from self absorbed people, it has always been a thing, but more people are getting into the scam globally now.
who should offset the missing work
I don’t know about the rest of your questions, but generally there wont be much missing work. Unemployment is rising thanks to automation and AI, and a lot of work is bullshit busy-work anyway.
With a lot of upheaval and confusion in the interim, I truly believe we could cut working hours by 50% and still be basically fine.
You can’t cut working hours if you get rid of all the immigrants doing the “busy-work”.
Energy & Fuel policy
In 2025 the leader of the Örebro Party, Markus Allard, in a post on X wrote that he wished to see a complete elimination of taxes on energy & fuel.[48] Allard once again said that this was a priority for the Örebro Party in an X-post in 2026.[49] As taxes on energy and fuel make up 40 to 50% of the price in Sweden, abolishing them would lead to the prices being significantly decreased.
Again, never a path of substance to make this happen. This is how this spreads. It always sounds great in quips but no actual policy substance to get it across the line.
It depends on what kind of work it is of course. But a large portion of jobs don’t see a reduction in productivity because people don’t really work 8h efficiently. Some see productivity increases. In combination with better well being, less sick days etc. it can be done.
Highly recommend everyone read the direct response this article is quoting. Direct from the other owner of the company on Hacker News. Makes the whole “scandal” seem very understandable in my opinion.
Additionally,
Not good enough. If I give them money, the fascist co-owner will use it to donate to other fascists. Either remove him from the company or lose some customers. That is their choice. There is no middle ground with fucking Nazis. It’s us or them!
I don’t think he can be removed. Mullvad is 100% owned by its two co-founders.
That reply just shows me that he fundamentally misunderstands the issue. By giving money to Mullvad I would directly support the pos party that this guy donates to. Do they not understand where the money in their bank account is coming from?
I read it as he implicitly does understand that and is the reason he suggests getting a refund if that is your priority. He is just urging people to see nuance that there is collateral damage for the rest of the people that make mullvad too. A loose analogy would be, I disagree with Trump and I wish my country would divest from the USA, which is all well and good, but the workers don’t have great protections and would likely be the first to hurt. Sure a majority of them voted for him I could rationalize, but that’s not the same rationalisation companies use to layoff before they actually start to hurt.
Decent people are boycotting the USA though, because that is the only chance we have to get the people of the USA to snap out of it and care enough to change their society. The same applies here, where Stromberg says it is not that big a deal, it’s just fascism.
Sure, that’s fine, I tend to agree, I was drawing out the picture of the collateral, so it’s considered as much or as little as it is worth, but at least considered.
I would hope that the mullvad staff are completely opposed to fascism, it would be naive to believe that is true of all of them though. I have no interest in them losing their jobs (except for the fascists of course), or in the company failing. But it would be dishonest to continue supporting mullvad now, while long term not supporting companies such as unilever, monsanto, nestle, amazon etc etc. Mullvad are no doubt in a bit of a crisis right now, but I do not believe they have responded well to this… they posted on nazi twitter, but not on mastodon, or bluesky for instance. I’m currently looking into alternative vpn options, and don’t have a single one that ticks the boxes. This sucks, my government (australia) has serious overreach/privacy issues, and is very clearly in the pocket of the usa, and israel.
Many options, so much dodgy. https://embed.kumu.io/9ced55e897e74fd807be51990b26b415#vpn-company-relationships
In the last couple of months I just bought 12 months through a voucher that is no more so doubt I’d get a refund, so I’ve got some time to decide. I swear everything I look into deep enough has something going wrong with it, but I guess all we can do it take the battles we can handle.
I added 4 months about a week ago, applied for a refund today, and it was approved today. I believe the only chance we have of mullvad removing the ahole is a mass of refunds, customers need to show they care. My timing was of course very lucky in this respect.
My first vpn provider was called vpnarea, had them for a few years, and ended up paying for a 2, or 3 year discounted block, before they vanished and took my money with them.
I appreciate that mullvad doesn’t do any of that ‘60% off’ bs, and I can/could just pay for 3 months, or 5 months, or whatever
it’s a trash industry, decent resources are very difficult to find, everyone is recommending nord etc with affiliate links, heaps of vpn company sites lack pertinent details, have servers in countries they shouldn’t, or don’t have servers where they should, are owned, or based in dodgy countries etc etc. Many of them appear to suck for linux completely, or unless you are using vanilla ubuntu, or fedora etc
somewhat handy(ish) https://embed.kumu.io/9ced55e897e74fd807be51990b26b415#vpn-company-relationships
less handy, but still https://www.vpnlocations.info/
and we appreciate y’all doing it, at least here in California.
the line for the secret delicious berries was shorter this year than usual (they are in watsonville and delicious. go get some at gizdich ranch and give Nita my love) but that’s probably because the growing season is all el nino wonky.
Understandable how?
Understandable in that there’s no way a company or employer can tell you how to spend your money. That there’s 2 owners with divided beliefs who are working for a similar cause. They are indeed private individuals using their individually earned money for private purposes.
If, let’s say, Mullvad as a company was donating to this political party, that would be alarming and worth freaking out about, but it’s one guy, basically donating with his funds he makes from his job. In a corporate environment there are many different people with different beliefs, of different economic statuses. Somebody might be donating thousands to one candidate, another donating hundreds to another.
Just because the co-owner of a company you like supports somebody you don’t like, doesn’t mean you should jump ship. Who knows if everybody else in the company is donating to other political causes?
Also i want to point out that understanding doesn’t equal support. it’s closer to validation, like, you can think what they’re saying makes sense but disagree with it.
Sounds reasonable for me to cancel Mullvad and tell everyone else to cancel. I don’t care if that piece of shit white supremacist Nazi did it as a personal choice or as part of the company. He is my enemy, I am at war with him and I will not do anything to support him. Hopefully enough people stand up so they put him out on his ass and he loses everything which is less than Nazi’s deserve.
All I see is a bunch of both-sidesing, conflating “speech” with economic power, and making claims that clearly don’t align with their actions.
If I had any doubts about leaving, the apathy shown in your screenshots from the co-founder has removed them
