Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

det.social

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

921–930 of 1001 posts

Re: The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

#921

Post by mariusor »

vr46 wrote: post #895
WhitneyLand wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fredrik, while acknowledging everything you said, the fact remains some of my money can end up empowering politics I find repugnant. If it were a small amount of money, it wouldn’t be an issue. If the politics at stake were less important, it wouldn’t be an issue. They’re not going to stop at immigration, look at other places in the world to see the future risk. Sorry, I was a paying and satisfied customer, and now I…

I am so so disappointed with Mullvad and this founder. I can’t believe I let myself get suckered and then paid up-front for the year again. The only influence I have is with my money.

Perhaps you should talk to customer support and try to get your money back. Even if it won't work, there's no faster way to reach the company to make a stand than to have an explicit paper trail to customers that are leaving them because of this.

Re: The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

#922

Post by peterfirefly »

rightbyte wrote: post #741
easytiger wrote: post #174

Far right? It's run by a literal marxist communist.

People change. Mossulini was a socialist in his youth.

And then he became a Socialist with power. Seems to me he remained a Socialist.

Re: The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

#923

Post by SZJX »

gruelsandwich wrote: post #897
kfreds wrote: post #570

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sorry to hear that. I'm not defending his choice, but consider reading Daniel's rationale in the Flamman article. There's also his blog [1], which explains some of his views. I know he doesn't share all of Örebropartiets views, but I should let him provide that nuance. As I said in another comment, speaking for myself, I don’t like that he made this donation and I know this view is shared by many of my colleagues…

Really fighting windmills with the hot takes about things that aren't true. "Sweden actually has a hidden wealth tax" and "The money supply is the real inflation!!" Really in line with typical views of right-leaning people you see on X etc.

Curious, what’s exactly not true about these? The Nordic (and Central European) countries are surely not friendly to people accumulating wealth, and it’s a widely known fact that monetary supply got out of control especially since Covid. Data about it are all available in public.

Re: The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

#924

Post by 9935c101ab17a66 »

JuniperMesos wrote: post #768
epistasis wrote: post #432

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty familiar with these right-wingers that claim to fight for "freedom of speech" they all end up fighting for "freedom of speech for the things I want to say, jail for those who oppose me." The 2024-2025 swing was pretty extreme on that front. Political extremists are all the same, left or right, nobody should be surprised because they seek power above all else. I had been pretty concerned about the level of…

Do you think any of the people publicly claiming that they will no longer do business with Mullvad because Daniel Berntsson donates to an anti-immigration political party, wouldn't make donating to that party an illegal, jail-able legal offense if they had the political power to do so?

Any? As in one of them? Maybe. I think it’s incredibly unlikely though, and I think you’re making a huge and questionable leap. Boycotting a business isn’t normally a precursor to fascist dictatorship.

Re: The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

#925

Post by tomburgs »

Admittedly I had never heard of this party before, but after looking into them calling them far-right seems to be quite a leap.

If you didn't know, Sweden used to be extremely welcoming to asylum seekers and refugees about a decade ago. What they got out of it were gangs, their youth being exploited to enact crimes (due to leniency towards minors), and neighborhoods that even the police doesn't dare drive through. Having a party that calls for integration and adaption to Swedish values, and at worst remigration, seems rather tame. Especially so if you just take a look across Øresund and see what's happening in Denmark.

Re: The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

#926

Post by olelele »

Auracle wrote: post #505
yreg wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Doesn't really sound all that far-right to me. To me too, then I got to the leaders quote on TV: "We must deport these damn parasites who sit and live at our expense." Yeah, okay. I know some politicians who speak like that, I feel I get the picture.

I think you'd be surprised at how quickly that sentiment has moved from the far-right to close to the center. People are (rightly, in my opinion) pretty upset at their governments for letting mass migration happen with pretty much only downsides for their actual citizens. People are all about the idea of helping the downtrodden when it's just an ideal, but when they realize it's having negative consequences for them…

„Letting mass migration happen „ is such a fallacy in and if itself.

Re: The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

#927

Post by myrmidon »

MichaelDickens wrote: post #477
myrmidon wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An honest question: Would you like to live in a world where company/employer exerts more control over the views that are publicly expressed? Do you actually want voting to happen via wallet? This whole view kinda confounds me. I don't see how you can honestly profess to be on the tolerant/right side, morally, while trying to boycott someones business over his political views. Would you have preferred early feminists…

> An honest question: Would you like to live in a world where company/employer exerts more control over the views that are publicly expressed? I don't really object to you asking this question, but I do object to you calling a rhetorical question "an honest question".

The question is not rhetorical. A lot of people in this thread advocate for hurting Berntssons career for the political views he expressed with his donation.

I personally believe that a lot of those people did not think through the consequences at all: Making it acceptable/typical/common for political expression to be punished at the workplace would obviously lead to self-censorship and direct/indirect censorship by employers.

My view is that this is utterly incompatible with liberalism (but a lot of the proponents would claim to lean liberal themselves!). I have not found good counterarguments for my current view so far.

Re: The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

#928

Post by Parae »

tomburgs wrote: post #925

Admittedly I had never heard of this party before, but after looking into them calling them far-right seems to be quite a leap. If you didn't know, Sweden used to be extremely welcoming to asylum seekers and refugees about a decade ago. What they got out of it were gangs, their youth being exploited to enact crimes (due to leniency towards minors), and neighborhoods that even the police doesn't dare drive through. Ha…

You're confusing causation and correlation. There are no links between asylum seekers, refugees and gangs, and crimes.

What leads to crime is not welcoming refugees, it's leaving people on the back in a state of precariousness.

Re: The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

#929

Post by Parae »

HDBaseT wrote: post #846
gpvos wrote: post #198

"Mullvad AB and its parent company Amagicom AB are 100% owned by founders [1 person] and Daniel Berntsson [...]"[0] So I'll assume he owns about 50%. Well, that ends my usage of Mullvad.[1] I appreciate that probably many of Mullvad's employees have different views, and obviously Berntsson has every right to his opinions and to express them, and I also appreciate that someone can have control over an opinionated comp…

Lets remember for a second that Mullvad has enabled people on all side of the political spectrum to communicate online, anonymously. This is more noble than almost anything else. Mullvad has enabled freedom for yourself, and millions of others, regardless of their political or personal leans.

Let's find another tool that enables the same, while not doating money to a racist political party.

Re: The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party

#930

Post by vrganj »

Auracle wrote: post #505
yreg wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Doesn't really sound all that far-right to me. To me too, then I got to the leaders quote on TV: "We must deport these damn parasites who sit and live at our expense." Yeah, okay. I know some politicians who speak like that, I feel I get the picture.

I think you'd be surprised at how quickly that sentiment has moved from the far-right to close to the center. People are (rightly, in my opinion) pretty upset at their governments for letting mass migration happen with pretty much only downsides for their actual citizens. People are all about the idea of helping the downtrodden when it's just an ideal, but when they realize it's having negative consequences for them…

Sentiment hasn't moved from far-right to the center. If it feels like that to you, it sounds like your perspective changed because you moved from the center to the far-right.
Post reply on HN