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
Mullvad has not claimed to be against it. Mullvad has pretty much said “if you don’t like free speach, we’re sorry you feel that way”.
Their statement reads
They’re pretty clearly saying that they as a company have no part in this political support.
True. But they did not say that they are _against_ the donation.
The original comment should simply be reworded to “and Mullvad says it has nothing to do with the donation and wasn’t aware of it” or something like that. Remove “
claim to be against”.They don’t plainly say against it no, but they’re still clearly distancing themselves from it. It’s not as good as outright denouncing it, but much better than staying silent.
Absolutely. IDK why me or you are getting downvotes tho. Did they claim to be agai st as the original commenter said? No. Did they distance themselves and clearly separate themselves? Yes.
“It should be obvious that Daniel’s private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad’s values or mission.”
It isn’t obvious though because it’s the fucking cofounder that’s doing it and they keep misrepresenting it as a speech issue. It isn’t some random employee, it’s the people who invented and make the decisions for the service, and it’s a massive amount of money as well
Nothing is obvious for multiple reasons, one of them is that people are deliberately trying to manipulate this to be ‘Mullvad is the nazi party’
The headline of the thread we are commenting on is pure trash.
I requested and received my refund, I hope many others are doing the same with the aim of pressuring his removal from the company
The headline isn’t trash, it’s accurate. If Mullvad didn’t exist, the majority of the party’s funding wouldn’t exist.
“Mullvad is apparently the main financier of a Swedish far-right party”
you are dodgy
You’re moving the goalposts. Claiming to be against it and saying they had nothing to do with it aren’t the same thing.
Their response quoted here was too subtle, but you know it is pr for a very serious issue for the company.
“not part of Mullvad’s values” ,perhaps we interpret this differently because we are different people. If something is not part of my values, I am against it, because I am value based, how I interact with society is completely defined by my values.
For all I know you are corn chip based, maybe even a corn chip cooked in palm oil, using child labour, purchased from amazon, and delivered by ubereats.
If they wanted you to think his actions were against their values, they would have said “against”. The fact that it’s a company owner and CEO, means that the company values and the owner’s values are the same, whether they publicly state it or not. That’s why they’ve made such a fence-sitting PR statement. Even when they’re trying to downplay the link between the company values and the owner’s values, they don’t commit because the owner’s values are the company’s values.
Using the word “fact” doesn’t make something a fact, do you find people usually fall for that obvious bs?
People are deliberately trying to mislead other people with click bait headlines. Discredit the company by making it look like he is the company. Many people do not read past headlines, many people just follow the crowd, and are eagerly manipulated by it.
If he was the only owner, then yes his company would very more than likely be very much in line with his own morals, or lack of.
But he isn’t the only owner, he isn’t the company.
Decent customers should be getting refunds to apply pressure to the dodgy co-CEO in the hope that he does the right thing and leaves mullvad, or is somehow removed, or so that the (as far as we aware ) decent CEO makes his own vpn company with the morals that we believe(d) mullvad to have.
The irony of clearly dodgy people deliberately trying to make this a ‘mullvad is evil’ thing, is pathetic, but not surprising.