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.
I agree that the feeling should be addressed but I don’t think immigration should be treated at all like the watering down of the political identity. Immigrants come to other countries, in part, to seek a better life. They become just as nationalist as anyone if given a country who cares for them and is worthy of being prideful about.
In Germany, the CDU and Merz work to strip Germans of their culture when they attack public healthcare or enforce working on Sundays. They would and will reduce vacation time, make trains worse, and deregulate the things that make Germany Germany the longer they’re in power. Culture is something that is generated when the common person is wealthy and influential to their community, not just the millionaires. Especially not the millionaires like Merz who are selling our home and our quality of life nickle by nickel.
I agree on the point of not ignoring these feelings. It’s a tough question, how to change the culture to be more welcoming to immigration in the time of looming climate refugee crises. Just wanted to point out that Sweden has a lower population density (26 ppl/km2) than the US (38 ppl/km2). Density is probably not the issue, although how all that land is put to use might be one of them.
It seems like mullvad always did the right thing, and stood for privacy. Very strange move by them
I think you articulated greatly something that’s been around my mind for a while.
I’ve been a while thinking how migration policies should be revised in the EU, attending to human rights and seeking the best for everyone. Personally I think the route to take is improve the countries of origin, do whatever we can so people doesn’t even feel the need to leave all their friends and family behind for economic reasons.
But as the EU is not addressing this because corporations profit from mass inmigration, the alt-right way of thinking about inmigration (which is basically genocide) is rising.