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
The company Mullvad do not support nor like Daniel Berntsson’s donation which is a personal donation from Daniel himself.
Mullvad as a company do not support far-right.
https://korben.info/en/mullvad-cofounder-funding-far-right.html
So long as Daniel is paid from Mullvad, Mullvad financially supports the far right by proxy.
I can’t keep track of all the assholes. Going to need an asshole tracker soon.
You can really tell how cut-throat and efficient the free market is when founders just have millions spare knocking around to play at Blackshirts.
Like people care 😅 look around, Meta and Tesla are doing great! Both companies are sooo much worse, nazi and earning money on child sex ads … people don’t care, most are to hypnotised by their mobile.
Once again, it feels like too much money and power just makes people into freaks. None are completely immune, too few are effectively resistant.
When money makes you complicit in the system where money is power, there is no way to leverage money to fix the system unless you’re somehow completely insulated from direct personal gain.
Morality, ethics, humanity… These must be maintained, have we all just moved on? Maybe it’s just me that’s given up.
I believe that a person’s world view, ethics, moral system, etc is almost entirely molded to fit their incentives. When I was a manufacturing engineer, I was effectively automating people’s jobs. I created an elaborate narrative that not only let me off the hook, but made me the good guy. I was making the workers more productive and therefore setting the stage for them to negotiate better pay or treatment. That plant closed down 3 years later.
If everyone who punched a child in the face received $1000, people would initially be appalled by anybody who would take that money. After a while, people would start to fondly remember moments when they had been beaten or hurt. They would consider it a vital part of growing up. “Pain is what makes us strong”. People would proudly announce how many children they had punched. It would completely change the morals of everyone with the opportunity to receive the benefit.
Many people have personal evidence of this. A work friend suddenly becomes a prick when they get promoted to supervisor. “Absolute power corrupts absolutely”. “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it”. In this case, A CEO feels his power in society threatened and he adopts whatever politics is needed to ensure he retains power. He isn’t doing this out of cold calculus. He will actually believe the politics because that’s what fits his incentives and makes him the good guy, actually.
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?
SOCKS
i would highly recommend ivpn
(recommended by privacyguides.org)AirVPN is awesome, also port forwards are nice for p29p
I just bought the 2/3 days and tried around 10 servers with wireguard and the best speed that I got was 500Mbit/s which is half of my speed.
Also, most of them did not even pass 100Mbit/s.
Am I doing something wrong? I had great speeds with mullvad with the respective set-up.
Windscribe have a good rep. Maybe
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’m using AirVPN since two years and I’m very happy with them.
i would highly recommend ivpn
(recommended by privacyguides.org)
How many degrees of separation do y’all deem acceptable and why? If Mullvad donated that money directly, that’s bad. If the owner donated that money, that’s also bad. What if the owner instead bought something from another company and the owner of the company donated the money? What if this second owner then bought something else from yet another company and the owner of that company donated the money? When can you stop saying “my money is used to fund this thing I don’t want”? Because money will spread so fast in the economy that inevitably, no matter what choices you make, your money will fund things you don’t like. For example, should the “true scotsman” vegan never buy anything because it is pretty much guaranteed that their money will end up in the pocket of someone who will spend it on meat? Again, I am not criticizing anyone, I am simply asking: where do you draw the line, why, and why not draw the line one step further than you currently are?
I think information is useful. I see no problem giving people the information and vehicles for making decisions… but as a society I do think we need to get to a place where we acknowledge that everyone has their own line and trust they are making the best decisions they can be, given the information they have.
I’ve asked the same question for situations where the court of public appeal has changed the donation decisions and yet people choose to castigate because they believe repreations to counteract their donations are due. I believe progress is progress and it should be rewarded, that is my line. Others will disagree and that’s fine.
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.
IIRC it is not the CEO but a co-founder. The CEO condemned it. But it’s all the same, money flowing into Mullvad floes into a neo-nazi group.
This seems pretty sensationalized. Wikipedia does not classify them as a far right party. “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.”
Yeah those Nazis are always for sure advocating for social housing and a 30 hour work week. /s
Very convenient how you skipped the next sentence:
Nationally the party has set out large-scale remigration
Oh, wow. Remigration is a link to another wiki page. Let’s learn something about it:
Remigration is a far-right concept referring to the ethnic cleansing via mass deportation of non-white minority populations
Uh. That sounds pretty Nazi to me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s not classify in the sacred text guys everyone calm down!!!
Yeah and it’s not Mullvad itself but the cofounder with his personal money (which of course he has for being the Mullvad cofounder and handsomely paid co-CEO, I expect).
Still, nuance?
The post should have been deleted, it appears to be deliberately manipulating the discussion/reality.
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.
The only real issue is that “remigration” is apparently code word for ethnic cleansing.
Yeah, just the small issue of genocide, but other than that, the rest of their policies are only moderate white supremacist ones.
Calling everything genocide robs the word of all meaning.
Ethnic cleansing is genocide. Genocide is a term that has an actual meaning, it’s not just “bad things”. Please educate yourself before correcting people on the term.
Ethnic cleansing can mean mass deportation, like in the US right now. You really think that genocide? Would deporting the 1.1 million Ukrainian refugees in Germany back to Ukraine be genocide?
Ethnic cleansing sounds vile enough. No need to call it genocide, which it isn’t.
Erm…“remigration” is the dogwhistle for concentration camps, though? I mean, you do you, but as far as classifying something as “far right”…talking about remigration easily tops that list ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
From what I read remigration is ethnic cleansing by mass deportation. I hadn’t even heard of the term before. I guess detention (or concentration?) camps are then inevitable too, we’re seeing remigration right now in the US. Everyone just watches and lets it happen.
It should go without saying that I’m sarcastic and absolutely against such inhuman policies and that it’s an entirely different thing from being against immigration and unlimited refugees in Europe. Different to the USA which is still mostly empty and an immigration country.
Sweden is now 8.1% Muslim. Even if most are moderate or non-practicing, that’s well past a limit where you can expect “assimilation”. Whatever that is supposed to mean, are we the Borg?
Does your own country and it’s culture mean anything? Are you allowed to have and preserve a cultural identity? Does ideal diversity and internationalism mean homogenity globally? I don’t think so.
So yeah, remigration is a far right dogwhistle, but calling anyone in favor of sensible limits on immigration/refugees a racist or xenophobe is a neoliberal talking point.
Anyway, climate change could create something like a billion refugees until the end of the century. That would make ideology pretty much irrelevant.
I guess detention (or concentration?) camps are then inevitable
Yes, those are inevitable. Even the death camps within, it’s not about detention. Like, the “real nazis” themselves wanted to “remigrate” jews to Madagascar. That was their original plan to get rid of them
Didn’t work, so they needed to genocide. And that shit will happen again while we all watch and debate whether “remigration” is a far-right thing and whether donating to a literal nazi party makes you a nazi ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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?
You guys are gonna lose your shit when you find out where your tax dollars are winding up… Or your phone purchase dollars… Or your electricity bill dollars…
Are you alive and spending? If the answer is yes, congratulations you cause pain and suffering.
Some of us try to make conscientious choices though, we do not assume that every dollar that flows through our hands doesn’t have blood on it, but we make choices based on the information we find.
Your ‘argument’ while accurate, is also encouraging apathy.
What’s the difference in apathy and inaction?
Nothing.
In reality nothing
I was refunded, I was not apathetic, I make conscientious choices based on the information I am able to obtain.
‘If in doubt, find out, or go without’
I’m never going to assume I know everything, or that everything is static, but I approach corporations, governments, social media, humanity, cynically… for good reason.
Yet you participate in society. Curious.
Yeah this is the type of response I expected. An unserious meme potshot because that truth is too uncomfortable.
Yet you’re still participating in this thread. Curious.
My phone company is evil, sure. And individual consumer choice has limited utility in a world where all the phone companies are evil, which is why consumers should get organized.
But if I find out that my evil phone company is the primary financier of my or another country’s most prominent Nazi party that’s advocating for Nazi policies, I’m switching to the other evil phone company. Not a difficult decision?
They’re all evil, bud. That’s my point. You’re causing harm to someone somewhere with the things you spend your money on. Folks can downvote all they want, but what I’m saying is true. Doing the least damage isn’t doing no damage.
Try reading my comment again.
It’s pretty easy in my opinion. We see, that right wing shit spreads around the world.
My consequences will be: Any company supporting this shit (even indirectly) will not be paid with my money in the future.
Too bad my subscription for a year has been paid a few weeks ago…
They’ve offered refunds for those who are upset about the owner’s actions. Not condoning anything, but maybe worth getting your money back.
my refund was accepted the same day I requested it, without issue, or argument.
Yeah, I will take a look into that. Thanks!
With this the only European browser is Vivaldi, by its own structure as a cooperative, owned by the employees, quite far from the right. The only thing they sponsor is a local football club in Iceland.
I hope that KDE would improve one day its independent Konqueror browser (KHTML/ Qt engine, ancestor of WebKit and Blink, Linux only), to have some more alternatives in the EU. It works as browser AND file manager, but due to a good improvement very slow nowadays.
Mullvad browser is still mostly maintained by the Tor project and doesn’t phone home, still one of the best choices for a no fingerprint browser even if you use a different vpn for it. Biggest downside imo is it’s not on Android. It’s entirely FOSS and again, no phoning home on an action, so it doesn’t matter what the creator thinks.
My personal use case for tracking is different from others, I mostly want to avoid surveillance capitalism. It’s genuinely a problem for my PTSD, if I talk about my PTSD on a corporate app I’ll get spammed with triggering shit 24/7 because they like to spam you with “solutions” and self help and news for crimes against women like it’s my special interest. Obviously I would love to avoid state surveillance but you’re not getting that from any vpn server domiciled in the west, it’d have to be in a geopolitical enemy of the west e.g. Russia or China or Serbia and most people would not like the latency that involves.
FOSS nowadays is less and less a guarantee, since Google, M$, Amazon and Fakebook are one of the biggest contributers of FOSS (naturally all with their corresponding tracking APIs). Currently the company ethics, transparency and trust are a very important. At least for me, it’s not acceptable when a service is used to sponsor right wing or nazi parties. It’s not direct Mullvad, but their CEO paid by this product. Faschism is advancing in a creepy manner and at least I’m not willing to support it in any way.
PD. TOR was developed by the US army and secret services and they still owned the onion server. The future and free internet will not be the Onion, but I2P and decentralized networks, out of the reach from big brother corps.
The person talking about bufferbloat is making a good point and if your router can run even something like freshtomato then you can use cake aqm and make life better.
If you cut out buffer bloat it’s easy to forget that everything is only slightly slower, it’s the inconsistency in the latency that makes you really notice. With a base of ~130ms when it doubles for those first couple of packets of every page load you really feel it, as long as it’s smooth, your brain can adjust.
I have it for my whole house and no one notices/complains.
https://www.waveform.com/tools/bufferbloat https://github.com/lynxthecat/CAKE-autorate
That said, it’s kind of niche then more niche to run it on the VPN too, I wish it were more accessible.
Title is incorrect, it’s not Mullvad donating the money but one of the owners.
Where does he get the money he donates?
He gets his money from multiple sources apparently, mullvad obviously being one of those sources.
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.
I wonder if people will do this for my business. “It’s not the business! It’s the owner!” (The owner is the business…) I could get away with a ton of shit.
How many owners does your business have?
Mullvad has more than one.
This post is blatant disinformation.
They even released a statement regarding this.
