The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party
det.social
det.social
I've merged the other threads into this one, so you'll see some anachronistic timestamps below.
It's strange to see HN mods allow this much attention to a political, and contentious issue.
From an HN point of view the idea is to give the discussion a place, since the community obviously wants to have it.
EDIT: nvm it's rate limited
So where do you draw the line?
Just this week I saw multiple offtopic Epstein schizoposts by 10+ year old accounts that were alternately flagged and vouched. Should we allow that too?
My takeaway is this is a highly politically charged rant on a niche social media site — exactly the kind of discussion we're meant to avoid.
Things are rotten below ground and you give an inch, they'll want a mile.
Btw, I'm not claiming that we make every individual call correctly - that's an undecidable question anyhow since everyone will have their own evaluation of "correctly". But at the more general level of what principles to apply, I do think there's a certain consistency: they've been the same for many years, and we do our (fallible) best to follow them.
About that, there are lots of past explanations: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...
Edit: more at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48724830 in this thread
A 100% airtight filter against political articles seems unrealistic to maintain. Since “political” is itself not fully settled.
I'm also surprised. Usually opinions opposing the far right are removed from HN.
Mullvad has two owners, founders, and CEOs - Daniel Berntsson, and me, Fredrik Strömberg. All posts I've seen yesterday and today, including the newspaper articles, talk about Mullvad as if Daniel is the single owner, founder and CEO. It should be obvious that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission.
If you have any questions, comments or concerns you're welcome to comment on this thread, or email our customer support.
See below for the response you'll get from support:
-----
Mullvad is a political company. We fight for freedom of speech, freedom of information and the right to privacy. These are firmly held values of the founders of Mullvad.
Mullvad protects the right for people to express things we don't agree with. We protect the right of everyone to access views we don't agree with.
We also live these values by being tolerant in our daily work. Everyone is welcome to collaborate with Mullvad if they share these narrow core values. As employees, contractors, customers, suppliers, lobbyists, campaign partners or whatever it might be. No matter what their other opinions are and no matter whether the founders or anyone else in Mullvad dislike them. The founders themselves fundamentally disagree on several important issues.
This is what allows us to advance our common causes. Being in a tolerant and intellectually open environment is also liberating and promotes truth seeking.
The more people do this, the better a place the world will be.
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.
That said, if you no longer want to be a Mullvad customer for philosophical reasons, we think it's important to honor that. In that case, reach out to support.
> It should be obvious that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission.
It should be obvious that what people are concerned is their money being used to support these political causes, whether it was done in a way that keeps the company out of it or not is besides the point. Daniel, of course, is free to choose what to do with his money. I am, too, and based on this I will be making a choice to not spend any more money on Mullvad subscriptions. Nothing personal, and it's a shame because I have nothing but praise for the technical side of it. So long, and thanks for all the fish.
I have to say, this is a disappointing message. The thing about intolerant movements is that tolerance doesn't fix them, it makes them worse and lets them accumulate power until they can destroy the tolerant.
I'd recommend reading Karl Popper and his Paradox of Tolerance, which he formulated after seeing this exact thing play out in his native Austria with the rise of the Nazis.
I’m a long time Mullvad customer, likely paid Mullvad upward of 400€ in the past number of years, as well as recommended it to friends and family members.
What you seem to be missing in your comment, is that some of that money I paid, found its way to support an organisation that has extreme racist views.
I’ve reached out to support and requested a refund of my outstanding credit.
I’ll be moving on.
Are there any alternatives left?
For me, Proton isn't one.. not sure what else there is.
What you seem to be missing is that every single € you've spent on virtually anything in the past number of years, some of it has found its way to support organisations that have extreme racist views.
how so?
Karl Popper said, "Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
>> the same way that someone's opinions on animal rights, taxes or public healthcare ...
We're not talking about reasonable people disagreeing about tax policy, we're talking about free expression, the entire purpose of Mullvad.
When you make a large donation to a political party whose most fundamental policy is restricting the free expression of people, that is wholly incompatible with everything Mullvad says they stand for.
When a founder and executive with influence over Mullvad policy and operations is exposed actively and financially support restricting free expression of people, it's not "tolerant" to pretend that's somehow compatible with the mission and brand of the company.
I don’t support remigration, but calling immigration “the free expression of people” is a stretch. It’s orthogonal.
You can argue that remigration isn’t protecting the privacy of those who are surveilled by the government or deported to repressive countries that surveil their population. But Mullvad’s product protects even those people (it must, because it hides the identity of who’s using it from itself).
I don't know enough of Swedish politics or social issues to determine which one is the more correct characterization of the party, but even that is a serious difference in policy.
Their polices focus on the way people dress, the languages they speak in public, the institutions and schools they build, the traditions they practice.
People would be forced to self-censor their speech, their beliefs, and their behavior.
It's not a "stretch". It's the whole program.
Do you have sources and quotes for this? Wikipedia only says “remigration”, although another comment mentioned that the translated Swedish word implies “assimilation”. Trying to restrict what people (even immigrants) do goes against free expression: deporting those based on ethnicity is immoral for other reasons but does not.
Far right political parties have a marked tendency to severely restrict freedom of expression once they’re in power. They routinely call for it when they’re the underdogs, but that often changes fairly quickly once they get their way.
In some cases you can see hints of that before they came into power. In France for instance, our main far right party (Rassemblement National) supports drastic budget cuts to state-financed media, and I believe a more direct control of said media from executive power.
One would have to check whether the Swedish Örebro party is similar of course. I personally no absolutely nothing about that party. Still, it is not a stretch for me to strongly suspect that a party that calls for deportation (let’s call it what it is, okay?) is also a party that is, or at the very least will be, against freedom of expression and freedom of information.
If it is, then Mullvad’s co-founder has a serious conflict of interest, and I would have no choice but seriously lower my confidence in their VPN.
I hope their sister company, Tillitis, is mostly free of such. Though even if it too is tainted, their TKey is fully open source (schematics and all if I recall correctly), and simple enough to be independently audited. They even have an unlocked version you can burn yourself so you don’t even have to trust their provisioning process. That’s the difference with a VPN: a VPN is like a Palantir, you kinda have to trust Sauron will do right by you. The TKey is more like Nemik’s astro-navigator: the user can verify themselves they are its sole master, once they did they can trust it even if it was manufactured by the Empire itself.
I mean, I love my TKey. I don’t care if Elon Musk and Peter Thiel themselves oversaw its manufacture, now it’s mine, and there’s no way I’m letting the enemy have exclusivity over it.
I actually agree that many far-right parties seem to restrict freedom of expression when they have majority power, but so do many far-left parties. Far-right may be generally statistically worse, but again, this says nothing about Örebro specifically who aren’t typical.
Sure, Örebro is not typical, and may indeed be an exception.
But.
This apparent racism remains cogent evidence that they are also against freedom of expression — even if perhaps not openly. Also, I have yet to know of one political party who sincerely advocates for both deportation and freedom of expression.
What does defunding state-funded media (aka propaganda) have to do with the freedom of expression?
You familiar with separation of power? Like Judges being funded by the state, and yet, somehow able to stay independent? Shocking, I know. Here’s even more shocking: media are like that too.
I mean, okay, they aren’t always. In France for instance they fluctuated from straight up propaganda tool, to very independent, and now back to being less independent. Unfortunately it’s not being recognised as a fourth power, worth cleanly separating from the other organs of the state (executive, legislative, judiciary). Still, the separation is there to some degree.
Anyway, freedom of expression.
The practical effect of stopping state funding of media, simply means all we’d have left as mainstream media goes, are those owned by a tiny number of very rich people. And the overwhelming majority are either neoliberal, or pretty far to the right — some squarely fall into the far right. Precisely the kind of propaganda tool you seem to expect from the state, only even more pronounced. Oh sure you’re "free" to express leftist ideas. On your tiny YouTube channel. Nobody is going to listen to you from their TV or their radio.
Kinda suits the far right parties, doesn’t it?
We speak of freedom of expression, but really that is taking it from the wrong end. What we really need is freedom of information, that is, actual, practical access to a broad enough range of ideas. And with curation too. Stupid stuff like Flat Earth should be relegated to the rank of cute entertainment. Dangerously false stuff like climate change denialism should be mostly ignored by recommendation algorithm, and moderated away from any kind of mass media. Hate speech, like, "trans 'people' are abominations that deserve a bullet in the head, let’s grab our AR-15", should be prosecuted.
Anyway, what is said is much less important than what is heard, and to what extent. We can keep a nominal freedom of expression all right, but it doesn’t matter if all people hear all day is pro-genocide, pro-billionaire, anti-regulation, anti-queer, and anti-science.
---
A note on vocabulary: it’s kinda hard to communicate how things work here in parts of the EU, because you just don’t have the word. I want to talk about publicly owned media, as in owned by the people, but this clashes with "public company", which means owned by shareholders.
So I have to resort to "state funded", except now you think it means "state controlled", because of course if you fund something you control it… except no, see judges, and the funding doesn’t even have to go through the state — or at least, not the executive branch.
It’s like explaining someone who’s just been told all their life that the sun rises from the East and sets to the West, means something different now than what it meant 2 thousand years ago. It doesn’t fit in a simple comment.
that seems schizophrenic. either state funded media can be abused and there should be none of it, or we find a way to prevent abuse, but then that should also work for the press.
even more so as nowadays press is also digital and there is really no difference between a website from a newspaper and a website from other news media. but one can't be state funded, but the other can.
Well, now they do to some extent, and that’s a problem, because for retirement for instance, they apparently refusing to even think of raising the rates even a little bit, and few discuss ways to raise the salaries themselves. All they can think of is making us work later, which doesn’t work because whatever pressure you relieve from the retirement funds, goes straight to the unemployment fund. Oh wait, there’s a solution: kick people out of unemployment insurance.
Anyway, something like that could be devoted to various media. I believe it would work best if it was done through an independent organisation (or federation thereof, we still want local media). And of course we want that organisation to be democratic, but I haven’t thought through the details where the devil lies.
---
Note: I spoke of the independence of judges above, but if I recall correctly, in France we have much fewer of them than in Germany (per capita). They are overworked, justice takes ages to be served, and there are signs that it is on purpose. I suspect one reason is it allows the executive branch to set the priorities for the justice system, undermining its independence at a deep level.
Where can I read more about how this is the fundamental policy of the Örebro party?
I think the real issue is this: "The party is heavily opposed to political corruption and high politician incomes and wants to reduce the wages of politicians and senior officials." (from Wikipedia, among other sources.)
From Wikipedia:
> Some of its key issues include lowered wages for politicians, ending the tax payer funding of various sculptures, monuments and art, large scale remigration, a stricter immigration policy, and free dental care.
I think most criticism of this party is probably around "large scale remigration" and "stricter immigration policy", which are often nice ways to word "getting rid of everyone that doesn't look like us".
But if you want to play this little game, I can play too. Personally I think the real issue people have with this platform is the free dental care. Big tooth obviously doesn't want to lose profit.
Is it? They appear to be some sort of hardcore pseudo libertarians with some nationalistic vibes. To an extent that seems to overlap with Mullvad’s declared value?
yeah i'm sick and tired of hearing this, because it gets applied very asymmetrically.
we routinely tolerate certain kinds of intolerants and silence other, and that sucks.
case in point: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/17/hamtramck-mi...
people happily tolerate lgbt-intollerant people, afraid of being called islamophobic and/or intollerant, and but we do not tollerate at all people that have been calling that risk out for years.
so yeah, popper's writings are being grossly misused, and i'm sick and tired of seeing that come out in every discussion on these topics.
---
Also: if only mullvad is taking that kind of political stance (no-log vpn etc)... maybe you should think twice about who is actually on your side.
I'm not Swedish, so it's possible there's something that I am missing. But skimming the wikipedia page for the party (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party#), I don't see anything that says the party is pro censorship.
But if they promise to target specific groups of people to close their schools, regulate how they dress, ban their prayers, and suppress their art, it's all about restricting their freedom of expression.
That's the whole program.
There are plenty of political parties that proudly claim to oppose "hate speech".
> But if they promise to target specific groups of people to close their schools, regulate how they dress, ban their prayers, and suppress their art, it's all about restricting their freedom of expression.
I could be wrong, but it looks like their plan is to cut public funding, not to censor those things.
does that fight against "intolerant" also include fighting people from other culture that are systematically and religiously opposed against your current society and its tolerance and will undermine it within the next couple decades by reproducing more? nvm im aware asking for self awareness is too much.
It's weird he said that, given that at the time there were many examples of intolerant societies that had become increasingly tolerant. So the statement is factually incorrect, and, given how educated he was, he knew this. In other words, the statement is a lie. But very useful if you manage to put yourself in the position of being the one to define what is intolerant, and which things are so important to tolerate that they should be beyond democratic decision-making.
That said, I don't disagree that private donations can be incompatible with (or more accurately, counter-productive to) the stated mission of a company. And it's not unreasonable for journalists to report on it, on the logic it may affect consumer choices. But I'm not familiar with Örebro, and nothing in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party#Policies indicates they're against online anonymity or free expression. But maybe I missed something?
Classic
I cannot speak for Daniel. I know there are some policies he likes and there are things he doesn’t like. Personally I am not a fan.
This morning Daniel explained his rationale to most of the company. Speaking for myself, I don’t like that he made this donation and I know this view is shared by many of my colleagues. Speaking as the co-CEO of Mullvad, we will continue to protect the universal right to privacy. People should feel safe using Mullvad regardless of their political affiliation.
(aftbit already mentioned this link downthread but perhaps it's helpful to say this explicitly.)
Edit: actually I should probably pin that to the top. Done now. Sorry for the confusion!
Unless you happen to be of Somalian descent in Sweden. Then you should be ripped away from the only home you've ever known, indeed possibly the only country you've ever been in, and sent to a foreign country you have no citizenship in, where you have no home, don't understand the language, know no one, and be forced to try and survive.
Seriously? It's not like the Somalis have been in Sweden that long.
Somalis are usually not spread out among the natives. They tend to clump together in ethnic enclaves where it is very easy to learn Somali (and where life is unpleasant for the unfortunate child who doesn't learn it).
Surely we can agree that if such kids exist then they must be very, very few in number?
I don't believe that integration has worked well either, but it doesn't mean that I think we should "send back" people that were born here and don't have any other citizenship.
That's actually one of the biggest problems with mass migration - that all incentives go against integration into the host culture.
To add, they all retain their Somali citizenship.
I said they weren't necessarily Somali citizens. Somali citizenship when born outside the country is more complicated than that and will not be universal.
Either way legal status is just one of many reasons why this would be a horrific crime against humanity requiring prosecution by the Hague under the Rome statutes. You're still ripping an entire ethnic group away from their homes.
It does matter, Somalis are not Swedes. They don't belong in Sweden, much the same as Swedes don't belong in Somalia.
>You're still ripping an entire ethnic group away from their homes.
Sweden is not the home of Somalis.
Nope, that is what will get you taken over by the assholes. Reasonable defense is necessary in reality. There ARE bad actors, they must be kept out.
Mullvad was one of the last products I felt I could honestly recommend, and feel good about. Never falling for this garbage again. The world is complete shit right now.
Here's something worth considering: why would someone whose ideal is open borders, who has been an animal rights activist, and someone who has led Mullvad for 17 years (with the track record it has), choose to donate to this party? If you like what Daniel and I have done together over the past 17 years, and now vehemently oppose his choice to make this donation, doesn't that make you just a little bit curious?
It made me curious. It didn't change my ultimate stance, but it did temper my emotions about it.
What "moral choice" specifically was Daniel supporting?
No. I observed that they liked Mullvad and now considers it complete garbage. I shared some priors with them, suggesting that there is evidence that they haven't seen yet. This evidence didn't change my stance on the party, or Daniel's donation. It did make me understand, which is not the same as agreeing.
A political discourse which only knows 0 or 1, GOOD or BAD, Nazi or Good, is not a healthy discourse. There's almost always something to learn, if you lean into curiosity instead of just labeling things right away.
I understand that you want to defend you business and your friend, but signing up with the Nazi party means you sign up with all of it. I find it highly unlikely your cofounder was unaware of the rest of the racist and viscous rhetoric when he opened his checkbook to buy the party the equivalent of a house.
Mullvad likely makes good money, but thats not a casual "I read this one article and didn't look into it deeper" kind of donation for anyone.
There are very good (and well-documented) reasons to believe a large part of the recently immigrated foreigners in Sweden are exactly such bad actors.
Your arguments don't really work the way you seem to think they do.
No, in fact, the opposite of this is obvious.
The company’s values aren’t reflected accurately if you believe your money is funding free speech regardless of race.
A great litmus test for the (somewhat outrageous) claims in this thread: does Mullvad refuse to provide service to non-white immigrants in Sweden? If yes, then you have a point. If no, I do not think Mullvad is the entity that is confused in this situation.
If you are the co-CEO of a company, will you push it to align more with your values, or less?
This isn't a company founded 300 years ago by a long-dead evil man in a business vertical completely unrelated to how it started, it's a baby company with the evil founder still actively involved at the highest level of management. Maybe you can regale me with epic stories about the companies you've worked at where the founder had no ability to influence the company and its values, but that's not been my experience at all, in any human organization anywhere.
1. People definitely start companies with a certain set of values and behaviors (as a company) and do entirely separate things in their private life. This is trivially true.
2. I don't think the personal values and the business mission in this case are even in conflict. You can be a racist and support free speech / privacy. Indeed, I'd actually say the venn diagram of "racists" and "people who vociferously espouse free speech ideals" is more union than it is disjoint.
2. I don't think they're in conflict, either, I think the company's values are the founders' values and I think those values have been revealed to be bad.
Regardless you can always say "I don't want to give this company money because that indirectly is gonna funnel money to an anti-immigrant political party in Sweden", and that is a perfectly valid position to take. But a lot of people in this thread are clearly going a step further than that, ostensibly in an attempt to give them a greater sense of moral superiority than is necessarily deserved.
No, actually, I can say that. I just did. I'll do it again: I think Mullvad is a bad company if they have the absolute lack of morality and foresight to keep this jerk on as co-CEO, his values must and will influence the company, and they won't get another penny of my money for as long as I live.
You seem to think that my money should be spent according to your misguided and incorrect demands for rigor in my moral thinking, and that's just not how any of this works, buddy. The way it works is this: if Mullvad wants any of my money, they must prove to ME that they are not evil. The burden is entirely on them, as they want my money, not the other way around.
I was entertaining this conversation because you seemed genuinely curious about my opinion initially. I now see that you're actually trying to police my morality and tell me what is or isn't justified about how I make my own moral choices. I am no longer interested in talking to you about this.
I'm not saying this to dunk on IKEA, but sometimes even when there's a sole founder, the mission of the company and the mission of the person who founded it do not necessarily align.
EDIT: It also seems that the party is extremely left leaning but is anti-immigration, as a person who lives in Swedens third largest city (which is predominantly non-Swedish, like myself: I am also an immigrant) I can understand Swedes desire to minimise this, it's not a "far-right" topic anymore.
I do not believe you.
Regardless: do you think IKEA did more to promote Naziism in the decades that proceeded Ingvars death, or more after?
(the answer is of course: the exact same amount, which is none).
If you're unhappy making people wealthy who you disagree with, unfortunately I'm going to have to suggest that you disengage with society, your taxes fuel wars (largely against brown people), you're forced to use technology created with slave labour in order to engage with banking applications and you're going to be really mad when you discover what goes into your food.
Taking an absolute position against one person who creates a service that would allow you to evade fascism is pretty ironic given the way the world is going regarding online speech.
We must make sure that they follow our politics.
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 or LGBT advocates to be hounded in their professional life? Would it have been better for more people to do that?
If you want to vote for or against Örebropartiet, then just do it at the booth.
Plenty of people here basically seem to indirectly advocate for company based censorship and some kind of budget-plutocracy, and no matter how "morally correct" your views are, that is under no circumstances a worthwhile endeavor.
I don't really object to you asking this question, but I do object to you calling a rhetorical question "an honest question".
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.
For many, it's not just an intellectual position but an emotional one. This doesn't necessarily mean it's wrong, but you probably won't be able to reason them out of it. It's the same reason I don't listen to Michael Jackson. He's dead and none of that streaming revenue would go to him or to raping children but...yuck.
At the end of the day, there's an irony in this guy supporting the very freedoms on the internet which are being used to disseminate criticisms against him, and perhaps inducing people to starve one of the vehicles which helps maintain those freedoms.
That description fits every political party everywhere in the world.
The "irony" in supporting that party I believe is a stretch. I don't see how support for some neo-nationalists is inherently "anti-freedom"; would that not apply to any party arguing against open borders?
My personal belief is that professional discrimination because of political support is a very slippery slope, and I honestly think that a lot of people directly or indirectly advocating for it are not fully understanding of what this means and where that slope ends:
When asking about professional boycott for "questionable" past positions (like being gay in Turings time) I only get silence in response because people presumably realize that such witch-hunting often ends up looking really bad in retrospect.
edit: I just misunderstood your last point, completely agree.
It's like people who think Americans shouldn't shouldn't have first amendment rights. The irony is that the first amendment protects their ability to criticize the first amendment.
For better or worse, the internet and all its collective outrage is now the world's HR department.
Money has a huge influence on politics, and recognizing that reality isn't the same as wanting it or encouraging it.
I'm kinda confused here. The context of this is that a rich tech bro uses his money to fund and promote a political party, with our money, but we can't decide to not pay him because that's influencing money with politics (???)
What kind of bizarro world is this, he can use his vast wealth to promote racist parties but we can't collectively use ours? How about he just "does it at the booth" and donates his money to the against malaria foundation?
I'm suggesting that small political progress is simply not worth witch-hunting for. If you have political concerns, engage by voting, starting your own party or advocating for your cause instead of ruining the career of a person you disagree with.
If I'm living at the opposite side of the world and my money was indirectly influencing Swedish politics then I'm doing Sweden a service by discontinuing my payment. After all the only thing I'm doing is reduce the power of corporations in a democratic process, I literally cannot take any Swedish vote away. That's exactly what you asked for.
> If you have political concerns, engage by voting, starting your own party or advocating for your cause
I do all of that, I'm an active member of a European political party and engaged far beyond just voting. But I'm also not going to stop to make sure my money as far as I can control it does not go into the pockets of millionaires who single handedly decided to bankroll 70% of the funding of a party that runs on ethnic hate. That is money in politics. If there was no money in politics, these people wouldn't be able to spread their hate. All of these parties on our continent are funded and supported by oligarchs across the world.
My view is: its not your money that goes to a party you dislike, its Berntssons; money doesn't stink, and it's not your responsibility how some fraction of it is spent after you paid someone for a completely unrelated purpose.
You basically try to avoid a second order effect (Örebropartiet getting money) by leaning on an inherently anti-liberal mechanism (applying pressure via workplace).
You might think the end justifies the means here, but I strongly disagree; legitimizing discrimination at the workplace based on political beliefs is in my view much worse than anything that Örebropartiet could ever achieve.
You are obviously completely free to do business with whoever you want, but if you are advocating for boycott here (=> pro corporate censorship) you are directly doing more damage to liberalism in my view than some swedish local party ever could.
I'm confident in this view because I'm certain that politically motivated workplace discrimination is/was/would have been absolutely horrible for tons of people that turned out "right" (=> secularists, feminists, LGBT advocates, ...). Nothing that could be realistically achieved by such boycott appears even close to worth the trade to me.
Crucially, almost everyone ever believes his own moral compass to be "correct", but many turn out (somewhat) "wrong" decades or centuries later. So allowing more avenues to force views on others is always a risky proposition because those avenues are not just accesible to people that you believe to be "right"-- you also open them to people that you know to be wrong (i.e. rightwingers that want to get you fired for being an anti-nationalist traitor or w/e).
> 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 or LGBT advocates to be hounded in their professional life? Would it have been better for more people to do that?
Okay, first of all, early feminists and LGBT advocates were and are hounded in their professional lives. This has happened to progressives for all of human history, it's actively happening under the current US administration, and it's going to continue happening forever.
A bigger point here is that your argument is morally worthless. You're just saying that I shouldn't judge anyone, because other people have judged wrongly in the past. I disagree entirely. I wouldn't buy juice from a rapist, I wouldn't buy a computer from a murderer, and I wouldn't buy a VPN from a fascist.
The largest point however, is that your argument implies that I am compelled to spend my money on Mullvad regardless of what I think about the people who work there or what they do, and that's an obvious absurdity. I am free to spend or not spend on whatever I choose for whatever reasons I choose, and politics is going to be one of them. You'll have to get over it.
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 advertising for Mullvad I've seen recently, that's usually a really bad sign for a VPN type company. But seeing this comment, in combination with the news article linked here, tells me everything I need to know for trust.
VPNs are all about trust. Mullvad has completely broken all trust with me.
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’m out.
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.
Maybe there's a case to distance Mullvad from him, then. Not taking a stand is also a political choice.
Daniel made this decision as a private individual. Some of his colleagues (including me) dislike it as private individuals.
I recognize that the amount as well as his position of power within the company (co-founder, co-owner, co-CEO) make people who disapprove more uncomfortable than if it had been a much lower amount from a regular employee.
However, as others have argued, what would happen if Mullvad started weighing in on politics unrelated to its mission?
Better to see Mullvad almost like a force of nature: Mullvad believes privacy is a universal right. You might disagree but at least it's consistent, and I'd argue that's one path to trustworthiness - you know how we're likely to treat you as a customer. (equally, regardless of your political affiliation)
Obviously everyone is free to make their own choice on whether they like this stance or not.
I don't think you should not be allowed to have strong political opinions in such a position. I just think that in this case, it is very dangerous to express so much support for them in such a public way. I say this because (from my perspective at least) a large part of Mullvad's "competitive advantage" is their brand image, and it just feels that a link to controversial politics probably does more harm than good to this brand image.
I have several colleagues who I'm fairly certain are anarcho-syndicalists, meaning they want to abolish the state and capitalism. I don't know about my colleagues, but in general anarcho-syndicalists seek to bring about their vision through organising trade unions, and use that to seize control of the means of production and distribution. I on the other hand am clearly a capitalist pig seeking to oppress my workforce. Why else would I invite them to join me on the barricades against mass surveillance and censorship? Shared values around privacy? :P
I have no business questioning which demonstrations my colleagues participate in, or what they write on their blog. As long as they are not actively malicious against me, our workplace, or their fellow coworkers.
It's getting late, maybe I'm missing something in my description. I guess that's a rough approximation of how I feel about tolerating differences of opinion.
Any reflections on the book https://howisincorruptiblegoing.com/ ?
Again, I have no idea if any of my colleagues actually subscribe to such ideals. I was simply commenting on tolerating differences of opinion. There's also a difference between empathy/understanding and sympathy/agreement.
> You don't seem to realize how much power you, and your co-founder do have vs them.
Perhaps. I've thought about that many times. I'm pretty sure I understand it well intellectually, but I have little experience actually being an employee myself. What experience I have was almost two decades ago. I'd love to hear more about what you mean. What did I say that suggests I don't understand? Was it the "capitalist pig" joke? I was trying to inject some tongue-in-cheek humour, but waking up this morning I regret writing it, as it has little to do with the point I was trying to make. Unfortunately by then it was too old to edit. If it's something else, please tell me.
What I try to do is imagine how I would want to be treated by someone who has hard power over me, in the way an employer ultimately does over their employees. I read books and research on the subject, watch videos, listen to podcasts, learn from mentors, and I've refined my leadership philosophy over the course of the past 17 years.
I aspire to give all of my colleagues a maximum of autonomy. My approach is something like this:
1. The right person, in the right role, with the right manager. 2. Establish and refine a mutual understanding of goals, strategies, and expectations. 3. Delegate to the greatest possible extent.
The right person is roughly someone who has integrity, drive, competence and is easy to communicate with. By integrity I mean someone who admits when they are wrong and tells me when I'm wrong. Drive comes in many shapes (tech nerd, building a team, "just" a good work ethic, or simply wanting to put food on the table) - all of which are perfectly fine drives. Basically I want colleagues that care about something, anything. Competence means being able to perform their job role.
The more you have 1 and 2, the easier it is to build a mutually high-trust relationship, and a long-term collaboration with increasing autonomy.
Ultimately trust is about willingly being vulnerable to someone or something. I think that is why some of my colleagues are upset right now. They see Daniel's donation as a breach of that trust. I get that, and I feel for them.
> Any reflections on the book https://howisincorruptiblegoing.com/ ?
I haven't read it, but I've heard of it. What little I know, it sounds in line with what Daniel and I have done. Here's our ownership directive: https://mullvad.net/en/blog/ownership-and-future-mullvad-vpn
As we write in the article: """We started building this organization in the summer of 2008 for idealistic reasons, and we are still idealists who think privacy is fundamental to a civilized society.
The best strategy for achieving societal impact through entrepreneurship is consistent, long-term, and value-based ownership. For us, this disqualifies taking outside investment, either through venture capital or going public. Mullvad has instead been growing organically without outside investments. It takes longer but the results are better."""
If I understand correctly, Ries is arguing that the more valuable a company is, the more tempting it becomes to extract that value. Sure, that's why it is important to have principled and long-term shareholders. An organisation's long-term strategic behavior necessarily tries to converge on its goals, set by its shareholders. I recognize that most companies are owned by shareholders who seek to eventually increase their personal wealth. I also recognize that principles almost always get to take a back seat if they cost the shareholders too much money.
Personally I reject the U.S. 1970s corporate law doctrine that the only legitimate purpose of a company is maximizing returns to its shareholders. That's ridiculous. In the case of Mullvad its mission is related to privacy, mass surveillance and censorship, in large part because we believe privacy and the absence of mass surveillance and censorship are part of the foundation of a healthy and thriving society.
As for extracting value to benefit me personally, I don't intend to accrue more than I need. I think I've reached the point where I'm satisfied with my lifestyle and the buffer I have. I've stopped playing the stock market, and instead placed my savings in long-term investments which require a minimum of attention. I'd rather do other things with my time. Obviously I'm also confident in my future earning potential should I catastrophically lose both my company and a large portion of my savings. It is very freeing and I recognize how rare and useful it is to be able to act in line with your values without concern for economic impact. I think it allows me to make better long-term strategic decisions about our companies.
Mostly I just want to maximize my contribution to society. I've toyed with the idea of placing my shares in Mullvad and my other companies in a foundation with some kind of open-source mission. I've also reached out to various non-profits and talked to tax advisors about abstaining from dividends, and have them sent directly to those non-profits. We'll see.
I don't do this for the money anymore. I do it because it is important to me. I wonder if a lot of people commenting or trying to apply social pressure assume that we're worried about the company losing value. Of course I would be sad if colleagues or a lot of customers left us, as I care immensely about both. That doesn't mean I'm willing to betray my principles, or in this case betray Mullvad's mission.
I hope I've managed to answer most of your questions. Please tell me more about what I should do to better understand the power I have over my colleagues, as their employer. What am I missing? Thank you.
I don't mind some jokes, though, it made me think of Animal Farm, which does not fit here.
You seem to be doing a great job as an employer, already caring is better than most, which is a low bar.
I meant your political power, more than power in the employer - employee relationship. You have more political power than your employees, by a lot. You may not use it, much, until today. But the imbalance is big, as proven by recent events.
Do you have plans for what will happen with the company when you two are no longer around? The book is more about such things, rather than what you might be able to with any profit. What happens to the organisation when you personally is not around to steer it?
Thank you.
> You have more political power than your employees, by a lot.
For sure.
> Do you have plans for what will happen with the company when you two are no longer around? The book is more about such things, rather than what you might be able to with any profit.
Loss is a natural part of life. Nothing exists or remains relevant forever. Market needs, people, and the world at large change. Hopefully for the better. The best we can do is act based on how we understand the world, which is why empathy and curiosity are so immensely valuable. They nudge us to understand the world and other people better, which facilitates more collaboration. I believe the vast majority of people have good intentions, but we often don't understand their behavior because we are blinded by our biases. When someone you respect does something you don't understand, or disapprove of, the rational reaction is curiosity. The alternative is to live an intellectually poorer life, which in turn impedes your ability to practice strategy, which in turn makes you less able to make progress on your goals.
We've considered so called "limited company with special restriction on profit distribution" [1]. It is a one-way "poison pill" for Swedish corporations that wish to permanently limit their ability to pay dividends to shareholders. Ultimately we found it too restrictive. It would risk impeding our ability to fund various open-source software and hardware efforts, among other things. I don't think we would have done it anyway. The risk is too high that you misjudge some aspect of it.
We've also talked about the option of creating foundations and donating our shares to them. Both of us see major risks with that too. In any case I hope it won't be relevant for a long time.
> What happens to the organisation when you personally is not around to steer it?
Daniel is a bit older than me, but unfortunately I have a progressive illness for which I take low-grade chemo and biologics. Modern medicine is amazing, especially the newer biopharmaceuticals that have come out in recent years. I will likely have to scale down my involvement first though.
Daniel would lead our companies to the best of his ability, together with our amazing management teams. I trust him more or less completely with the corporation. I know he will represent my values where it matters the most. He's very good at that. Last time we talked about this the feeling was mutual.
[1]: https://bolagsverket.se/foretag/aktiebolag/startaaktiebolag/...
You are saying something incongruent with what kfreds said!
"Mullvad is weighing in on politics unrelated to its privacy mission because money given to Mullvad is eventually ending up in the hands of Örebropartiet by way of Daniel directing his compensation into his donations."
There, better?
The crux of what I'm saying is that if you give money to Mullvad you are giving money to Örebropartiet, and that's unchanged by the first part of the statement.
Is privacy inconsistent with right to dignity, liberty, and equality?
The US is currently in a very bad place politically. It’s visible not just in politicians, but in everybody’s minds, all the time. A person who believes they’re fighting for their life obsesses over “us vs them”, and forgets their every principle and even most reasoning, until the fight is over. When we spit on your principles, please know that they are our principles, too, we just are not currently well enough to remember it.
In this forum, yes. Unfortunately there are lots of people who don't care to inform themselves in the least. During the weekend my impression was that most people assumed Mullvad only had one founder, owner and CEO. Some people were implying that Mullvad's workforce supported this, which of course is ridiculous. I don't want to be associated with this donation. Then there are the people who think he donated 5 million USD or EUR. Sigh.
It would be nice if people didn't resort to make things up, and instead expressed their disapprovement based on fact. That's what I'm doing. As are several of my colleagues.
> The issue seems to be simply in this case, some people clearly find the private individual's actions objectionable enough to not want to support a product that individual is deeply associated with
Yes, that is clear.
> Fixating on this being done as a private individual just comes off like a bit of a deflection attempt from a pretty straightforward case of individual actions having consequences.
Ah, thanks. That was not my intent. For sure an individual's actions has consequences, especially when you're in a position of power. In this case people are holding Daniel accountable by switching providers. They are acting according to their beliefs. That's fine.
Meanwhile I am also trying to clarify Mullvad's position on the matter. Many people understand it and still disagree. That's also fine.
A bit too late for that now, isn't it? Extreme anti-immigration stances have always been associated with anti-privacy because eventually those stances evolve into state apparatuses designed to identify dissidents and targets for deportation. What will you do when the party your co-founder supports eventually demands stripping away privacy for the sake of finding 'terrorists'? Trying to hold this thin veneer of apoliticalism outside of your privacy stance is a remarkably foolish one and one that most people can identify. Especially those who saw that progression occur in real time.
Then Mullvad would oppose it. I mean, the party is insignificant compared to the other parties in Sweden, so I wouldn't want to call them out specifically. It would be weird to give such a small party attention on our blog. If a journalist were to email us and ask about it explicitly that's another question. Of course Mullvad would oppose it.
> Will Daniels privacy principles stand
I would be very surprised if they didn't.
> or will it bend to suit his likely stronger beliefs in anti immigration?
What makes you say that? He's worked 17 years on building Mullvad, which is worth far more than 5 million SEK.
> Has he made similar contributions to parties against chat control?
Not to my knowledge.
They are making a stand. This stance that they've taken has made me decide that I'm switching from another VPN provider TO Mullvad. Not many people have the backbone to actually stand behind freedom of speech when it may cost them something. It's very admirable.
This is literally defending his choice. More than that it is providing direct support to the views you are apparently trying to distance yourself from by suggesting people read literature in favour of them - not in a context where they even see opposing arguments.
But as a fun aside to the people debating that his views aren't right wing... consider this quote from the aforementioned blog (translation made via firefox's swedish to english model)
> A building permit officer at a municipal city building office is primarily dedicated to preventing, making it difficult, costly, delayed and uneasy construction. He causes great damage and thus produces negative value, but still also receives his salary from the tax of others and is thus supported by others.
Can we get more right wing than claiming that imposing standards on industry so they don't go around building death traps that kill people to save a few bucks "causes great damage and thus produces negative value". Not even as an argument that this particular office is overly restrictive, but just as a statement about building permit officers in general.
Using regulations and permitting to discriminate against people who you don't like is a long standing right wing tactic, but isn't the nature of the complaint I quoted above.
I'm very far left myself, but I hate this tendency to equate any intellectual engagement with the right wing thought whatsoever with support. It's almost as if rightist politics were some kind of cooties that you catch simply by being in the same room or something.
Rightist politics may not be, but rightist rhetoric surely is. Consider GW Bush' statement "if you're not with us, you're against us" (or the 2025 equivalent "either you support genocide, or you're an antisemite"): where is the room for intellectual engagement in statements such as these?
Your suggested "intellectual engagement" with absolute positions such as these serves absolutely no other purpose than to lend them an air of legitimacy. There absolutely exist rationales that do not deserve to be "heard" or "considered".
Or put another way:
"Let's meet in the middle", says the unjust man.
You take a step forward; the unjust man takes a step back.
"Let's meet in the middle", says the unjust man.Why are you considering them, then?
> There absolutely exist rationales that do not deserve to be "heard" or "considered".
How do you know which ones are those if you never hear or consider them?
The practical application of the principle that you espouse is that someone has to intellectually engage with these things, and then decide on behalf of the rest of us proles whether we should be "allowed to lend them the air of legitimacy" or not.
To that I say: there's no socialism without freedom, and there's no freedom in general without freedom to think for yourself and make your own judgments. Any ideology that purports to restrict that is inherently authoritarian, whether on the left or on the right, and should be fought tooth and nail.
I have always considered compassion the driving force underlying left wing views. I really can't understand the mind of the spiteful left, it seems such a contradiction of values.
I know it is now an internet meme, but those who considered themselves far left 10 years ago would no be a moderate.
I'm a libertarian socialist though. And by "socialism" I mean all that stuff about the means of production etc, not higher taxes. As far as I'm concerned, the American mainstream left is still closer to American mainstream right than they are to my views.
Its a strange world now where everyone is expected to have a public opinion on everyone else's opinions to keep them in line. Very anti privacy, anti freedom, and against plurality of opinion.
Here's my interpretation: When someone has a shitty public opionion, we force others to MAKE PUBLIC their opinions.
And because our society is so polarized, we don't talk about opinions or their nuances; we reduce them to binary views (it's possible they are but not always), we pick a side and we light our torches.
Some people do that, yes, but I'd argue most simply don't care enough.
Furthermore, consider that the opinion-like discourse is clearly performative. We all know what the correct virtue signaling looks like, and we know that we need to ruin every person not doing the correct virtue signaling.
So it's less of a plurality-of-opinion situation, and more of a direct-democracy situation: a lynch mob.
(Not saying it's good or bad btw -- not my circus, not my monkeys. Just dishonest to say we love some sort of plurality while doing this I think.)
Relatively speaking HN is an oasis compared to other platforms. Which makes me wonder, are there forums with an even higher quality than HN?
I think the biggest hurdle for something like that would be selecting and keeping enough like-minded moderators to enforce the quality.
People care about the opinions of those they're invested in (emotionally, politically, financially, etc.) and it's those opinions they want to know. People want to associate with those who share their values. It has always been this way.
The guy who made the donation is entitled to his opinions. No one is questioning his right to make a donation.
People are, however, that by paying for the services of a company he owns, they are as a second order effect financing politics they find repugnant.
Really in line with typical views of right-leaning people you see on X etc.
Such a bad place we're in: people say they value "freedom", but then you can't choose you own political representation without being witch-hunted to death by the same "freedom" group.
(I honestly think that the perfect response in this case would be to support the cofounder, if anything, to make their own choices, and refuse to hate on the person's political leaning. But alas, the chains of freedom are super heavy.)
In short, freedom should at least maintain the capability of preserving basic poltical freedom. From my understanding of that party, they are clearly against other people's existing political freedom.
Not bare tribalism, just trying to keep everyone's freedom.
Indeed. Open borders is the ideal. That's also one of the views that Daniel and I share.
Claming otherwise is at a minimum disengious, but with absolutly no clarification from Daniel directly, it just reads like you are lying about his stances for PR.
It's his ideal. He states in the Flamman article that it is unfortunately not possible due to mismanagement by the Swedish government.
> clarification from Daniel directly
Read the Flamman article and read his blog. I've linked to it elsewhere in this thread. You can choose to believe me or not.
If open boarders are only acceptable when you can refuse immigration based on ethnicity, then no, you do not support open borders. When you work to forcably eject not only first but second generation immigrants, people born in Sweden, based on their ethnicity, you do not support open borders.
The above looks to be a core tenat of Daniel's prefered political party based on their own statements, so its extremely disengious to discuss some old article about supporting free movement while he's actively donating to people who want to brutalize hundred of thousands of Swedish residents because they are the "wrong type" of people.
You are choosing to ignore that OP and many more people don't believe that otherwise this thread would not even exist.
I still remember in 2013 to 2021 when this was happening in the US and wider internet on twitter and reddit. A lot of people in Europe / AUS / NZ thought it was some soup opera made up by the internet's few.
Slight note, it’s soap opera. They got that name because the original sponsors were soap manufacturers.
This isn't a simple difference in political beliefs, they believe that certain groups of people are basically subhuman and don't deserve basic human rights.
How can you support that?
It seems there are a lot of far-right extremest trolls/psychopaths on hacker news. What a disgrace.
I'm not speaking for or against anyone's views for or against anything here, but it's worth noting that Brendan Eich's $1K donation caused quite the stir.
How many people unrelated with your personal gripe, people that were doing a good job since you were paying and satisfied customer, are you willing to punish in order to "send a message"?
This is an impossible standard to live by and demand from everything you buy and every service you pay for. Doubly so if you need to announce to the world you're dropping a product because of something that isn't done by or responsibility of its employees.
The only influence I have is with my money.
> the fact remains some of my money can end up empowering politics I find repugnant
are you paying taxes? are you using gasoline? are you paying for amazon?
Some ratio of your money will always go toward something you hate. The big question is: is for a mulvad subscription that ratio bigger than for the alternative? The next question is: how is the ratio for things you like?
Why should this be obvious? I don't think that's obvious at all. The owner of a company could very easily decide to one day use their company to further their political beliefs/ideologies (see: Twitter, FaceBook, etc..). Why would Mullvad be any different?
To answer your question, we started building this organization in the summer of 2008 for idealistic reasons, and we are still idealists who think privacy is fundamental to a civilized society.
The best strategy for achieving societal impact through entrepreneurship is consistent, long-term, and value-based ownership. For us, this disqualifies taking outside investment, either through venture capital or going public. Mullvad has instead been growing organically without outside investments.
Our principles have withstood the test of time. Our conviction has remained unchanged through multiple serious offers of acquisition and outside investment. Words are cheap of course, but consistent action over the course of almost two decades is not.
Mullvad is about privacy. Neither Daniel nor I have used Mullvad's brand to promote our personal opinions.
On top of this don't change your service based on this outrage. If you change it, then you will prove that Mullvad is malleable by political pressure. You can guess what happens next...
The embellishments of what people actually believe is extremely exhausting.
FWIW, I'm an immigrant in Sweden and if they gained power I would be affected, but we talk about people with differing views to us as if they're actively violent in order to shut down conversation.
This catasphrophising language will eventually not help your cause, because ordinary people start to feel numb to it and the hard-right will not be defeated by it.
Q: When people seek asylum, is the expectation that they should return when its safe?
Or is taking in 10% of population mean that you have a permanent minority population that is part of a permanent underclass similar to how black people have it in the US?
Genuinely asking.
>"They will also be forced to leave, even if they are born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedish."
Some of them are doctors and scientists especially from places like Syria.
What? Motherfucker I am part of the underclass, it's brutally hard to escape the underclass and unfortunately if you turn up to a country with no connections, no safety net, no money and no applicable skills then: YOU ARE PART OF THE UNDERCLASS.
Why are all the Foodora drivers Arab? do you think Arabs are pre-disposed for food delivery? No, it's because gig-work that barely pays the bills is the only option for many: this is disgusting servitude, barely surviving like this.
> Some of them are doctors and scientists especially from places like Syria.
Doctors from Syria who don't speak Swedish, need to pass a bunch of Swedish certifications to practice and cannot take female patients aren't going to get along well.
It's a valid point and one I would grant you, but it's very true that the observed reality of things is that asylum seekers are the most vulnerable in society.
Pretending they're not doesn't make this not the case.
Doesn't mean you're automatically underclass. In her whole family nobody is involved in anything criminal. In terms of wealth I would consider them middle class. Like me, I'm also a middle class immigrant though from a western (richer than here) country with university education. I'm just not very ambitious so I coast in a middle level job by choice.
But they all came here with nothing more than high school diplomas. They just work harder for it than I do. Nights, tough work etc. She worked very hard to get a local passport too. Because that's not easy these days.
The stereotype of immigrants ending up straight in the ghetto is incorrect IMO.
Its a well understood point, even to the point that it ends up in economic and sociological studies.[0]
2) “Middle class” is not living paycheck to paycheck, I guess “middle” depends on which country you live in, but in Sweden if you don’t earn well or have secured employment (Ie; paid sick days) then people would likely not call you middle class.
In the UK, most people are working class (not middle) which is more defined by high income white collar work. In the US its based more on yearly income than the type of work or how secure it is. So middle class has many definitions and none of them cover gig-workers.
Working hard isn’t the point, i guess you’re arguing the permanency part, while glossing over where I said its very hard to escape the underclass, even though you’re clearly admitting that its very hard.
FWIW it might help to read a definition of what Underclass means, natives are also a major part of the underclass especially in the UK; its not a derogatory term, its a state of being that is hard to escape: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_class_in_the_United_Kin...
So, talking about an outlier who works hard, does nothing to talk about how the overwhelming majority are stuck. Unless you’re going to say every asylum seeker is superhuman, and truthfully now- we’re not talking hypotheticals, we have decades of migration information across the UK and Sweden to compare.
Arguing against what actually happens and talking about statistical outliers as the norm is disingenuous at best and immoral at worst.
[0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S026427512...
By the way this is only during the validation of their asylum-seeker status. Once they get permanent residency they can work.
You may not owe founders whose cofounders you feel are behaving badly better, but you owe this community better if you're participating in it.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
But as someone that has been in a similar situation to you, I understand it's tough to end up building something big with someone who's politics you do not agree with. I would seriously urge you to consider building something new that rejects this kind of politics explicitly.
Oh, I definitely agree with some of his political opinions, the obvious ones being around free speech, free press, and privacy.
There are important issues where we don't agree. His values around empathy stretch to most sentient beings, and he believes I commit torture when I eat fish for lunch. And he's still willing to associate with me.
Presumably because you are not an immigrant (or the child of an immigrant).
He is in fact the main financial patron of this racist political party. Saying he supports open borders at the same time is just a flat non sequitur.
Ok. Let me try. Please note that I am in no way defending Daniel's decision nor Örebropartiet. I'm simply responding to your claim that my previous statement is not believable.
> He gave $500,000 to a political org that has explicitly called immigrants "parasites,"
That sounds horrible.
I looked it up. Here's [1] a video of that debate in the municipal government. FYI, I would characterise the website as quite right-wing and generally not very trustworthy, but there is a video of Markus Allard along with the quotes.
The title of the video is something about a proposal regarding long-term unemployed individuals. He seems to be talking specifically about long-term unemployed immigrants, 10-20 years. He's complaining that he doesn't think it's right to allow them financial living assistance while Örebro is defunding social services for older people. I have no idea about the actual truth value of any of his statements.
Horrible way of talking about people, but in this case not immigrants in general, it seems. Within the context of people who have supposedly been unemployed for 10-20 years, I understand (but don't agree with) why he says those individuals are parasites.
> dehumanizing phrasing that mirrors Nazi speech and has been used to justify mass murder.
Indeed. His choice of words is dehumanizing.
> Saying he supports open borders at the same time is just a flat non sequitur.
Daniel has a blog that goes back to 2016 where he talks about waste of tax payers' money. What he expresses in his blog is consistent with classical liberalism, which in turn is consistent with freedom of movement.
Where is the flat non sequitur?
[1]: https://www.friatider.se/kaosdebatten-allard-kallar-sverige-...
There are plenty of people for whom it doesn't matter, but for some it does.
I think the bigger problem -- and I don't know the rules for political donations in Sweden -- is that any individual is able to pour millions into a political party of any persuasion. In the US this situation is made much worse since a Supreme Court ruling known as Citizens United which opened the floodgates for the ultra-wealthy to bankroll politicians. But that's another discussion altogether.
> is that any individual is able to pour millions into a political party of any persuasion.
It's an even bigger problem that political parties are heavily subsidized by the state, which favours the establishment.
This goes beyond purely monetary subsidies. Some people employed by the state have an essentially political function or have a large political influence over the population and they have been hired (and incentivized) by the established parties over decades.
I don't really give a darn who you voted for or what your founder did. I like the product I'll keep using it.
And Berntsson's ability to fund ÖP in doing that harm is directly linked to the financial success of Mullvad. Whether you or Mullvad agrees or disagrees with Berntsson or ÖP is irrelevant. Thanks to Berntsson, more money to Mullvad means more harm to us. So why on Earth would I pay you anything?! On the contrary, it would quite obviously be in our best interests if Mullvad fails as a company, if possible to such an extent that Berntsson is ruined financially and can no longer fund "nationalist socialist" parties such as ÖP.
It just doesn't matter whether Mullvad believes in free speech or not, not when Berntsson is making it so that giving you money causes us to be persecuted and harmed. And to be perfectly honest, I find your framing of this as "philosophical" to be profoundly appalling, and it tells me that you do not at all understand what is actually going on.
> Mullvad protects the right for people to express things we don't agree with. We protect the right of everyone to access views we don't agree with.
> That said, if you no longer want to be a Mullvad customer for philosophical reasons, we think it's important to honor that
Combining the above statements, would you have any recommendations on VPN providers for people who choose to leave Mullvad? As you will agree, anonymity and privacy are under attack the world over and even people who leave Mullvad deserve have access to tools enabling the same.
The VPN space is a cesspool of shady operators who seem to spend more on marketing than technology and it's really hard even for the HN audience to know which providers are legit. This is where your background and experience are really valuable, so any recommendations would be very welcome.
Yes, I am aware that the ask here is to endorse a competitor, however if someone has made up their mind to leave Mullvad, they are going to do so anyway. Enabling them to do so while retaining their anonymity and privacy will go a long way in advancing the political aims Mullvad stands for.
Since those conversations I've always thought that IVPN is closest aligned with Mullvad's values. Again, I haven't spoken with Nick in ages, so I don't know what IVPN is doing now.
I agree 100%, which is why the dehumanizing intolerance of the Mullvad CEO completely disqualifies your organization from being on the same side as that statement.
I agree that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission, and shouldn't be.
But what I do care about, strongly, is that Mullvad as a company doesn't bow to pressure from pro-immigration activists who are attempting to impose social and financial consequences on people and institutions like Mullvad that tolerate anti-immigration political speech. Which is of course why people are publicizing this donation and publicly stating that they will no longer do business with Mullvad because of it.
I want to state publicly that what would make me no longer do business with Mullvad is if Mullvad, organizationally, attempted to pressure Daniel Berntsson into not donating to anti-immigration political parties because it induces pro-immigration activists to attempt to boycott the company. I don't want to live in a world where people trying to run a pro-privacy VPN feel pressure to police anti-immigration speech unrelated to the core mission among people in their organization, and that's the principle that my customer dollars are riding on.
Thank you.
A stance that Sweden should reduce the amount of immigration they accept would be utterly unremarkable and never result in outrage like this.
I don't believe this claim, because immigration is a live political issue in my country (the United States) just as it is in Sweden; and people absolutely claim that reducing the amount of immigration the US accepts is immoral and genocidal. Seriously, claims of this nature are a huge amount of contemporary American politics and this is obvious to anyone who has seen the name "Donald Trump" in a news publication talking about the US in the past decade. Also I've read Bryan Caplan's argument that not having open borders is morally equivalent to Jim Crow, and read plenty of other people who think similarly to him.
I'm in the US too. Can you provide some sources?
https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueUnpopularOpinion/comments/1llz6...
It's the same "You're either with us or not" argument that forces a side.
So it is related.
It’s the Democrats and Republican politicians and party activists who can’t compromise. The Democrats don’t address illegal immigration, even the easy wins like when immigrants were placed in hotels while homeless Americans were in the street and crummy shelters (Maine). Then Trump finally deports criminals, but also technically-illegal people who’ve lived decades and started families here (and haven’t commit any crimes beyond speeding tickets), and restricts and harasses legal immigrants.
There’s something wrong with politics where parties can’t even accept the most obvious exceptions to their “controversial” issues, maybe because of the stupid “slippery slope”. I expect people to fight over 1 million refugees who aren’t misbehaving but overloading systems. I don’t expect people to fight over an immigrant who assaulted someone, or a legal immigrant who is giving more than they take.
But you're doing the same thing, making the same threat. You've only escalated it from a conscientious protest to a Mexican stand off.
I'm not icked-out by immigration discussion, but I am concerned by business owners starting down a political path. VPNs are not a very glamorous segment of the industry, and Mullvad had carved out a niche in taking a neutral side and fostering trust through a transparent product. My former boss spoke well of them and visited their sites in-person after hearing the marketing line about their RAM-only VPNs. Their appeal was not in protecting politicized speech, but protecting all speech and defending it as an apolitical technological imperative.
Now more than ever, it's hard for me to believe their brand identity. You're allowed to have political opinions, voice them and vote for them when you're a CEO. But spending your paycheck on inordinate political investments is how you ask for a boycott. It's how I would feel about any political investment that their CEOs make, and its already tarnished the Mullvad brand for me.
Yup, because I want the people attempting the conscientious protest to have less power to influence businesses and the people businesses employ. An apolitical firm is less likely to bow to pressure from one group of activists if they know that another, opposing group of activists is paying attention to how they respond to pressure from the first group of activists. Really, this has nothing at all to do with Mullvad specifically, except it does happen that I am a long-time customer of theirs.
> Now more than ever, it's hard for me to believe their brand identity. You're allowed to have political opinions, voice them and vote for them when you're a CEO. But spending customer money on political campaigns is how you ask for a boycott. It's how I would feel about any political investment that their CEOs make, and its already tarnished the Mullvad brand for me.
I don't see a meaningful difference between voicing political opinions and voting based on them, and making private donations to a political cause. Any money at all that an owner of a company spends on anything, down to their groceries, comes from their ownership of the company; just as any money at all that an employee of a company spends on anything comes from their salary.
But also lots of CEOs of companies make all kinds of political donations, many of which I think are bad. The reason this particular donation is making the news is because it's to an anti-immigration party rather than a pro-immigration party or NGO or some other cause; and a lot of people want to exert social pressure to make that specific political stance dangerous. Those are exactly the people I want to lose.
One of them is enabled by customer trust and investment, the other isn't? People wouldn't want to cut off their money if it wasn't going towards political parties. It's the connection between the business and the private donations that is causing the outrage, Mullvad's brand can't really escape that sort of conflation once their CEOs spend their paycheck on those donations. Same goes for the rest of Big Tech, look at Oracle or Meta for example.
> The reason this particular donation is making the news is because it's to an anti-immigration party
It's because Mullvad had an apolitical reputation. Maybe it was a lie, maybe it wasn't, but by either CEO investing in a non-privacy stance they're risking the brand appeal they once had. It's unfortunate, and I don't think it has to be a winners/loser mentality like you're pushing forward. These sorts of investments are the ones that erode principled businesses and divide their customerbase. Whether or not you agree with it is inconsequential, it's the political vacillation that is concerning beyond the outrage/fringe politics angle.
Today you might support them, next year you might be wishing you never gave them the confidence. I understand why many customers, even apolitically, see this as their breaking point.
"I'll boycott you if you keep supporting free speech" and "I'll boycott you if you stop supporting free speech" are hardly the same thing, especially when aimed at a company whose business is all about free speech, which at the dismay of some people also includes speech you don't like.
literally translated, “humans with empathy”
> The more people do this, the better a place the world will be.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance
The more people tolerate the far right, the worse the world will be because they will take your good faith and use it to extinguish tolerance for anyone but themselves. This is literally textbook. I don't know how you can invoke the word tolerance without understanding this.
Oh what a complex web this business of tolerance is...
There is zero contradiction on opposing both of them.
OK, but the far right, like all totalitarians, has an agenda that is thoroughly opposed to this. That leads to the tolerance paradox: You must be intolerant to agendas that would put an end to tolerance.
Going to sign up now through the tailscale partnership.
The mission statement that Mullvad has promised it's users does (did) come with a duty of care.
In my eyes that mission statement is compromised, it either dies here and Mullvad is just another product financing political parties by proxy, or something is done.
I hope you find a way to protect Mullvad from actions that are counter to your mission statements.
Name a single instance of right wing parties that did not violate all human rights the second they got in power. Name one, I dare you.
And no, historically such a fairytale world does not exist that you're trying to paint here. All right wing parties feed off aggression, painting humans as enemies, and populistic lies. It's always been this way, always will be this way.
Not a Mullvard customer anymore, and going to never recommend you again for any person that asks me in the future.
Go to history class if you still can't see the truth in my comment. I'm German, and that's our fucked up history, and our messed up ancestry of people "that just followed orders" that I have zero tolerance for. Your fairytale comment reads like the "Hitler just wants peace" protests during WW2.
There is always a democratic and peaceful option, and right wing parties never choose that option. It's unsystematic to how they fundamentally work.
Politics and the company you own somehow having to do with each other and influencing each other? Preposterous. Wouldn't happen!
Translated from Swedish wikipedia: --- Örebropartiet was founded by Markus Allard in the spring of 2014, when he was recently expelled from the Left Party and the Young Left. [...] Among the party's main issues are reduced politicians' salaries, reduced bureaucracy, civil servant responsibility, assimilation policy and the repatriation of people who do not adapt. ---
I think it is very reasonable to demand that people try to integrate when coming to a new country - learn the language, get into the culture. As a Swedish person I think this is missing from our integration politics, which is an often talked about topic in the last years.
In the end this is a political question and sadly instead of engaging in dialogue the reaction to these questions feels like it most often leads to polarization and division. Inclusion means also including people with different beliefs and respecting their opinions, even if we don't share them. Through understanding comes empathy.
Can recommend "The Righteous Mind" by moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt who discusses this in a book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Righteous_Mind
Fun fact: we get a dopamine release when taking an opposing stance and then seeing (subjective) proof of our stance. It requires self-discipline and fighting your impulses to avoid polarization.
What kind of things might be involved in a mandate for people to "get into the culture?"
If you come from a culture of groping women, not doing is gonna be a challenge. I get it. But we’ve also built mosques and have pagan festivals and allow public servants to wear their choice of religious attire. I think it’s a balance, but nobody is ever happy with wherever you set the balance.
When I learn the local language, I’m happier; it’s nice to talk to people. Not everyone agrees.
Tja.
Multi-culturalism should be about championing different cultures and not forcing everyone into a cultural homogeneity.
Dismissing any amount of integration is chicanery. We’re pro-social creatures, and knowing the lay of the land makes your life better.
This is standard for most of the world. Really, only some countries, all of them developed, are exceptions to this.
even as a german i have not felt welcome anywhere in germany (i grew up im austria).
i have been around the world and lived in a number of countries. i felt more welcome in china and even in the US for example than anywhere in europe
and i don't know what XI has to do with that. politics doesn't affect how people interact. not that quickly anyways. i was around when the big exodus happened in the mid-10s, and after covid china opened up instead of closing down. i don't even need a visa anymore if i just want to visit china. so even by that measure china has become friendlier. but that's not the kind of friendliness i mean.
Are you white? Try being non-white. Chinese people, and most Asians - yes, the entire continent, or at least most of it - are deferent to white people.
> and even in the US for example than anywhere in europe
The US is one of, if not the most, welcoming countries in the world. Additionally, I suppose you probably lived in a city or at least a large town in the US rather than anywhere rural or more closed-off.
Where I'm from (Northern Ireland) harassing women and attacking emergency services have been part of the culture for as long as I remember. Would you suggest that people arriving should actively take part in these behaviours?
I would assume that if attacking emergency services is the norm in Northern Ireland, so is police escorts of emergency services. That is not the norm in Sweden, through it has become the norm for certain regions where emergency services no longer feel safe going on an emergency call. The downside is that if the police is delayed, so is the emergency service, and naturally the quality of emergency service is reduce in those locations which some people say is a form of discrimination.
(My experience with Irish/Northern Irish people is that they're very friendly and welcoming, but I've only been there a couple of times).
But then we're getting a bit deeper into the issue. These are things that need to be considered if you want to mandate "integration" surely.
We now want people to integrate but we also recognise that there's a higher moral code which should supersede local customs. Is that correct? Then it seems like integration isn't the actual aim, but the shaping of people into a sort of ideal which is actually removed from local cultures.
We're also onto picking and choosing between the "better" and worse local traditions. But who is the arbitrator for which traditions are good and which are bad?
I did a bit of the integration course by choice, even though it’s not mandatory as a EU national. I found it fine, a bit boring because we grew up with most of these customs. The Flemish ‘traditions’ were all new to me, and I also realise I don’t follow them; but respect some if I’m invited to people’s houses.
I think we’ve made a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to integration. It’s neither super forced and awful nor useless.
By all means provide encouragement and resources so that people can adapt to their new situation, but don't demand it.
However, it does seem that this Swedish party is willing to "repatriate" even Swedish-born citizens, so at least they're consistent.
You wouldn't expect your child to be Pakistani if you get birth over there as 2 German individuals.
What you said makes no sense. Vanishingly few liberals believe laws should apply equally to citizens and non-citizens. If they did, they'd be for the complete abolition of visa/residency conditions altogether, simply allowing anyone to immigrate to the country. I doubt that even in the US more than 5% of people believe this. Any European country it'll be <3%.
Any visa/residency condition is a demand not imposed on citizens. Language and cultural assimilation aren't any different from other such conditions.
One issue is how the standard applies to different languages. A2 in French is enough to get by around Brussels, but B1 in Dutch is barely enough to understand people where I live now (dialects are to blame as well, of course).
Familiarity with one Latin-based language means other Latin-based languages “sound understandable”. I’ve no other connection to make with Dutch. But okay, that’s just personal experience.
Because not everyone in the UK could even hope to bend to work with Polish as a language in 1946.
Yes.
> does that also include reading/writing?
Yes.
> What level of language ability would be considered the minimum
C1.
I disagree. They should learn the language of their own accord or get kicked out.
> C1.
Yes! And I would expect immigrants in citizen-facing jobs in the public sector to be at C2.
I can't agree, even though we likely have the same goals. You want to filter for people who work very hard to do their best to integrate. You don't want to filter for being good at self-studying languages. Most people just suck at self-studying through not much fault of their own, they were raised that way. It can also be incredibly useful for non-language integration purposes, as it gives them hours of direct contact hours with natives which - again, for the dedicated ones, which are the ones we want to stay - often leads to social contact and further integration.
I get where you're coming from, but the tax dollars needed for such language schools are really negligible, and I've seen with my own eyes the benefits to integration that couldn't be had without it. It's just a good cheap investment. I'd still apply the same final bar as you would, FWIW.
B2 is conversational + able to hold a discussion about theoretical concepts in multiple temporal forms. That’s plenty.
There are > 190 countries in the world and many of them require immigrants to meet at least the same criteria for employment and assistance as born citizens.
the majority needs to welcome and support the minority.
and it's not that there is no burden on the immigrants. they still have to learn to understand the local language, culture, rule of law, etc...
we should learn from each other and take the good from each. the burden for that is on both sides.
>the burden should always be on the ones who are stronger to accommodate those who are weaker.
Is this a universal principle? Does this come with any limits at all? A salient example that comes up often: classrooms tend to have a small handful of extremely disruptive students that ruin the experience for everyone else. The current thinking is to not suspend/expel these kids because they are disadvantaged or whatever. But in doing so the other kids suffer greatly, not to mention the teachers.
How do you manage different dimensions of strength/advantage? It is the weakest in society (women, children) that bear a disproportionate burden of allowing large amounts of immigration from third-world countries. Why are the rights of women and children secondary to the rights of immigrants?
thank you for recognizing that. i believe this helps us have a reasonable discussion about this topic. let me also add that neither my beliefs nor any premises they are based on are set in stone. they are open to be challenged provided the challenge makes a good argument or presents new evidence that i was not aware of. i have certain goals in mind or rather a vision of how our society should develop that influence my beliefs, and maybe we should talk about those too, but for now let me address your direct comment.
Is this a universal principle? Does this come with any limits at all?
universal, maybe, unlimited, i don't think so. it's more about balancing. on average minorities are weaker, have less strength to protect themselves or to lobby for their needs. etc. maybe accommodate is not the right word, probably support is a better way to express what i have in mind.
but how we accommodate or support depends on the circumstances. allowing kids to disrupt the class because they are disadvantaged is not accommodating or supporting them. what we actually need to look at is why they are disadvantaged, and fix that. not an easy task. but for the classroom example specifically there actually exists a proven solution, namely montessori. without going into details montessori allows teachers to accomodate each child individually without requiring a better teacher student ratio. one montessori teacher can handle 30 children.
but let's get back to integration in society. if you allow me to read that into your comment, your choice of example suggests that you understand accommodating as lowering our standards. (and that's why i now think accommodating was a bad word choice)
i definitely do not believe that we should lower our standards. we should be less rigid maybe, and less punitive and more educational when standards are violated.
but as the majority we also need to learn about these minorities, their background, their culture, why they came here, etc. we need to approach conflicts with an attempt to understand and work with them to find a way to live together.
btw, i moved to a developing country precisely because i wanted to get a first hand experience of the culture there and understand where these people are coming from, what attracts them about europe or other developed places, and what is holding the local development back.
It is the weakest in society (women, children) that bear a disproportionate burden of allowing large amounts of immigration from third-world countries.
i am not comfortable with that statement. first of all what would the burden be that children have to bear here? are you talking about problems in school with classes being dominated by children that do not speak the local language? if that is it then well, the solution is to invest more money in education. train teachers, realize that it doesn't make any sense to teach children in a language that they do not understand, etc. the need for education reform has been discussed elsewhere, and that's a global problem. the challenges caused by immigrant children only make that reform even more pressing.
as for the burden of women, again, please explain what you mean. if you are talking about violence at least in germany the majority of violence against women still comes from germans, and even though immigrants are over-proportionally represented in the statistics, most cases of violence happen at home which means that they are not cases of immigrants against german women. those cases are the absolute minority but they are grossly over-represented because local women are much more likely to report such violence than immigrant women and furthermore are the causes for violence more likely the socioeconomic status of immigrants, and their lack of integration (many young refugees come without their family and are not only not integrated locally, they are not integrated at all, so immigration itself is not the root cause) therefore i do not see that as a fair claim that women bear a disproportionate burden through immigrants. unless you mean something else, but then please share what you mean here.
as i said, i am open to have my beliefs challenged, so feel free to question anything i say. i am here to learn and i am looking forward to an educational discussion.
Montessori kids tend to have parents that produce better kids (both in the genetic sense and in terms of how they are raised).
It's a selection effect (also on the teacher side), not because they have a magic way of turning disruptive/dangerous/criminal kids into little angels.
i have seen it work in china, and i can tell you that chinese kids are not angels, no matter how wealthy the parents are. actually the more wealthy the more likely those kids are misbehaved because those parents come in with a lot of entitlement that their children inherit.
furthermore the name montessori is not protected, so there are a lot of fake schools out there. therefore i suggest you look at the actual method and reason through the claims of why it is working.
the magic way that you are looking for is to give each child individual attention and then let them work by themselves. kids are disruptive most often because they are bored. children in a montessori class are never bored because they can choose themselves what to work on. that montessori works can therefore be reasoned from first principles. it does what everyone recommends: give more attention to children, and give them work that they are actually interested in.
if you object to that then i'd request that you provide actual evidence of the method failing instead of repeating claims without substantiating them.
To give an example from my own life/experience, I'm an American and Canadian woman, but I'm also a disabled lesbian. I feel uncomfortable when I go places (e.g. Ikea) and see Muslim families where the men are dressed in Western clothing and the women are niqabis, because it's an outward signal to me that they follow an interpretation of religion that is sexist and homophobic and are likely to be hostile to my existing.
There can be power overlap between the weakest members of the stronger community and the strongest members of the weaker community.
For the record, I don't have those feelings around all people of Middle Eastern descent or people who are visibly Muslim but not displaying an adherence to a particularly conservative interpretation of their religion (e.g. a hijabi in Western clothes or a group where some of the women are hijabis/niqabis and others aren't). I do have those feelings around white people who similarly display such conservative religious leanings (Amish, Haridem, etc.). It's purely ideological, not ethnic or racial.
The thing is, as a native, I don't have a choice to be here, whereas immigrants do. So why am I assumed to be the 'stronger' one, and why should ethnicity and religion override any other power dynamic?
but that is very subjective and projects a fear that in my opinion has no basis in reality. i have felt the discomfort myself, even as a man, and i have asked myself where does this discomfort come from. my conclusion is a bit difference than yours.
first of all it helps to look into the history of this culture. as you notice that this is not specific to muslims, but is in fact historic to our own culture as well, what the amish are doing today was the norm in the western world just a few centuries ago. we all did it, and therefore it is not an immigrant problem.
the headscarf in particular was commonly worn by women even less than a century ago. there is nothing sexist or homophobic about it. it's culture. correlation is not causation. i'd argue that most women in the western who still wear these do it by choice, not because they are forced by their husband. for many it's a fashion statement. an outward representation of their personal belief (as an islamic or amish woman).
if you look closer you will also find that many muslim women in the west do not cover their hair, but normally you can't see them because without the headcover you would not even know they are muslim.
it is also worth considering that in part the intention of covering up was for the protection of women. the scary part for me is who they needed protection from. but our western society is plenty misogynistic still, we have just become better at hiding it.
and are likely to be hostile to my existing.
this i find completely baffling. why would they be hostile to you? i believe if you talk to these women and get to know them and learn their motivations that will help you get a better perspective, and alleviate your fears.
The thing is, as a native, I don't have a choice to be here, whereas immigrants do
which choice are you referring to here? the choice to not cover their head? the choice to go against their own beliefs? the choice to disagree with their husband/family? those that have the choice and and to do it, are doing it. those that don't either don't have the choice or choose not to. it's up to us to get to know them to understand the difference.
why am I assumed to be the 'stronger' one?
stronger in numbers. we are the majority still.
why should ethnicity and religion override any other power dynamic?
which other power dynamic? religion still is the strongest power dynamic in every society. even in the west. atheism is effectively a religion too. it's just another belief. trying to suppress religious expression means to remove religious freedom. do we really want that? what if it is your beliefs that are being suppressed? you would not want that. we have to allow for others to follow their beliefs even if they contradict ours. but we have to learn to get along because rejecting people for their beliefs only pushes them into extremism.
I really dislike the idea that my discomfort has to come from ignorance. It doesn't. I've actually spent time in the Middle East (and yes, I wore a hijab). I am aware that the idea that the niqab is compulsory is not held by the majority of Muslims and it's a particularly conservative reading to consider it compulsory. I'm also aware that some women choose to be niqabi, which is why if it's one or two in a group it doesn't bother me - that's indicative of it being a choice, and if the niqabi is accompanied by hijabis or uncovered women it signals that she accepts variance in interpretation. When it's every single one, though, that tells me that it's likely that group of people has conservative Muslim views.
In terms of listening to people, I've also listened to ex-Muslims and queer people from Muslim backgrounds. I've found a lot of 'sit down and listen to X group' presents you with the most privileged takes from that group: You want me to listen to the Western revert, not the women from Afghanistan.
And again, I do feel uncomfortable with white people/people of my own ethnicity who outwardly display signs of belonging to fundamentalist/conservative religious groups. I don't like fundamentalist Christians, super Orthodox Jews, etc. I'm judging them by the same standards I judge anyone else. If anything, giving them a pass feels rather like the racial version of benevolent sexism.
I was referring to the choice on where to live. Unless they're refugees, immigrants make a choice about living in their new country and they have the option to leave/go back to a place where the culture agrees with them. I can't leave.
> religion still is the strongest power dynamic in every society.
Strongly disagree. I'd put class and sex up there alongside religion, personally. Those are strong power dynamics that exist even in societies where everyone is of the same religion/ethnic group.
I don't say anything to any of these people and I do live with the discomfort, but my point is to say that in this situation someone is going to be uncomfortable. It's either going to be me, knowing that they think I shouldn't exist, or them, feeling like they can't express themselves. There is also another lens for looking at this, which is freedom of speech. They have the right to express their beliefs (non-verbally) that I'm a degenerate who's going to burn in hell, and I have the right to express my belief that their beliefs are extremely off-putting and I'd rather not be around them.
no time now to respond in detail. i'll come back to that. but it appears you have a great deal of experience to share, so i'd like to ask up front to please share more.
just one thought that may indicate where my response might be going. being uncomfortable with other some people is something that makes me question my own feelings and beliefs first of all. why do those people make me uncomfortable, and what can i do about it? but to understand your discomfort i would really like to learn more about your experience.
another aspect of this discussion is the question of where the future of our society is going and how we best deal with conservative elements that reject change. anyways, i'll probably need a day or so for a more thoughtful response.
Other context: I live in Michigan, and there are actually Muslim majority towns and cities here - I don't live in one, but I do travel to/through those areas and where I live does have a Muslim population and there's nothing unusual to me about seeing a hijabi/visibly Muslim people out and about, so I'm coming from the point of view of those populations establishing places where they are the majority. And they've also used the power they've accrued on the local level to display hostility towards queer people. It's not a theoretical I'm making up in my head to enrage myself.
Specifically, I spent time in Jordan, which is a country that has a wide variety of people and people practicing Islam in different ways, so I'm definitely not under the illusion that all Muslims are the same or are extremists.
I definitely agree that we should question how and why something or someone makes us uncomfortable, and I agree that the first step should be interrogating our feelings and determining if they have a basis or if they're just knee-jerk displeasure towards change or something different. I have actually sat with these feelings for a while specifically because they're so taboo in left leaning spaces, and all I have heard is similar to what you say: That I'm bigoted, don't understand, etc. That's one reason I actually did go out of my way to learn and understand more: I wanted to interpret that criticism in good faith, and I agreed that I should know more before judging.
I have major theological and moral objections to central parts of all 3 of the Abrahamic faiths, even outside of the 'do you believe in God?' question.
Another piece of context is that I'm a 38 year old lesbian woman and I grew up in an environment where conservative religious movements were actively and openly hostile to me. I remember reading articles when I was 6 years old about how damaged and sinful I was, I remember the reactions to Matthew Shepard, etc. If anything, I've grown more comfortable with religious expression over time: when I was younger, I viewed any open display of religious faith as signaling that person was dangerous to me. I've also spent most of my life hating that I'm a lesbian and wanting, desperately, to be at least bisexual so I could be normal. I still struggle with this.
The question of larger society is one reason why I feel uneasy about the situation: I think the most likely path towards assimilation/acceptance for the Muslim community is doubling down on the conservatism and becoming allies with the Christian right. The fact that the Muslim community is full of people who think that my life should involve me being married to a man and unable to say no to sex/being raped repeatedly fills me with horror and makes it very hard to want more of them in my area. That's why I'm pro-assimilation: it's self-preservation.
If Muslims want to live in America and wear hijab, pray five times a day, observe Ramadan, etc. I don't care, but I draw the line at ideologies that perpetuate sexism and homophobia. (And again, I don't want fundie Christian immigrants or fundie Jewish immigrants either, and a white conservative Muslim family isn't any more acceptable to me.)
To me, when I see families/groups that are openly displaying conservative Muslim values, they are openly saying they don't want me in their society and if they had a choice, they'd get rid of me. Why wouldn't that make me uncomfortable? If you went out and about and saw people wearing 'castrate all men' shirts or a symbol that represented 'all men can be made to like cock if you ram it up their ass while they scream until you break them down', you would be comfortable with that? With those people existing in your city?
If you want me to live a life where I'm sexually assaulted regularly to please your God, I'm entitled to view that as a threat. If you openly express affiliation with that, I'm entitled to consider you hostile to me and not want to 'get to know you'.
i would like to continue this discussion, but some things i would like to share are to personal to be posted here in public. though if you are interested, my email is in my profile. i don't need to know your identity so if you find an anonymous way to email me that would work just as well.
that out of the way here are some thoughts i can add: i am firmly on the side of integration and creating a diverse community. allowing a minority to isolate themselves by becoming a majority in their area/town is neither integration nor diversity.
on your reaction to criticism, all i can say is well done. the struggle here is that it is difficult to share all that within the limitations of text messaging among people who don't know each other, and i guess my excuse for having had any doubts is that i believe that to many people make the same arguments without having made an effort to question them unlike what you did.
i am curious about your objections against religions, but not to counter them but rather to find out how they relate to the objections i have myself. (maybe that too is something better discussed in private. discussions on religion don't tend to go well on HN)
when it comes to being comfortable with religious expression of others the trajectory matters. yours is going in the right direction. you made an effort to learn more and you did become more comfortable. i could not ask for more than that, so there is nothing for me to add.
i am sorry you have to struggle with your sexuality. that's something i wish noone should go through. i don't know if i can relate, all i can say is that i am uncomfortable as a man to be associated with the typical concept of masculinity. in a world where generalizations are common i find it difficult to differentiate myself from the typical/normal (or what is generally considered normal/average) male. unlike the ability to dissociate from a religion if you disagree with it and no longer believe, i can't dissociate from being male no matter how much i reject the idea of masculinity.
anyone who believes that sexual assault in marriage is ok has failed to understand their own religion. this is why i struggle with the idea that the public expression of affiliation should be considered hostile. i now understand why you feel like that, and with your experience i believe that your feelings are justified, but for me people who believe that assault is right or have other equally extremist ideas in my eyes are not muslims or christians or whichever other religion they claim to follow but have actually strayed from god because neither the bible nor the koran or other religions that i know of allow that. and anyone who is citing quotes in defense or as criticism is not arguing in good faith. but i am saying that as an outsider, not being muslim or christian myself.
i think i said enough controversial things now so again, any more i'd rather share in private.
That won't last long among the young in Sweden, actually. Not if the current immigration policies continue, that is.
And there is the problem. You see, in modern Sweden (and many other European countries) it's entirely possible for migrants to live for decades without learning the language, understanding the culture, or even respecting the rule of law.
The majority needs to welcome and support the minority AND the minority needs to do their best to integrate. Right now the latter part is badly failing in Sweden, which is the reason for extreme amount of gang violence and social inequality plaguing Sweden. It's not even fault of the Swedes or the migrants, it's a systemic problem. The migration and integration policy is broken.
Assimilation really happens at the level of their descendants, who grow up entirely within the host country, going to their schools, consuming their pop culture, etc, and think of themselves as Swedes or Americans or whatever.
It's the same for a country. It's because it has borders, rules, and a strong culture that it has something to offer that immigrants might be interested in.
Yes, it is reasonable to demand people who come into a country adapt to rules - written and to a certain extent also the unwritten, of which Sweden has many - of that country. When in Rome, act as the Romans. This adaptation will never be 100% but that is not the point, what is most important is that newcomers learn to assimilate to such a level that the natives are open and willing to maybe integrate some parts of the newcomer's culture.
People who 'are the last representatives of [their] culture' can write a book about it while becoming part of their new culture since it is clear that their old one did not stand the test of time. They're much better off that way instead of living like cultural fossils for the likes of NPR and PBS to make documentaries about. By all means document what that extinct culture had to offer but life is for the living and culture is the commonly agreed upon set of rules how to live it.
Multiculturalism is a pipe dream, something dreamt up by people who listened to one too many version of John Lennon's Imagine. It has been shown not to work time and time again, it makes it harder for people coming in to a new country to assimilate and integrate because there is no clear target to aim for. Culture is not a fixed thing, it evolves through time by adopting new things and getting rid of old customs. Multiculturalism does not call for cultural evolution, it calls for revolution: here's a whole new culture, now deal with it. Revolution hardly every works and when it does it tends to go badly for those on the wrong side of it.
But at the same time, you should not be expected to give up your culture (as long as it is not doing something against the law).
I'm an immigrant to the EU/NL (naturalized, now a citizen), and I also lived in Sweden for a short stint. If Swedes are anything, they're open and welcoming, I'd even say too open and welcoming, which is part of why these issues keep cropping up.
Some context so I'm not immediately written off as ignorant or as carrying some kind of agenda: I grew up in Indonesia. My family is largely atheist, but we lived in Aceh (look up Qanun Aceh, it's Sharia law territory) and various other places around the country. I've been immersed in Islam, every sect of Christianity, Buddhism (I went to a Buddhist school as a kid), and Balinese Hinduism. I went to an international school with people from literally everywhere, and I'm still close with many of them, scattered across the globe as they now are. I say this to establish that I've actually lived among a wide range of people, cultures, and religions, this isn't an abstract opinion.
This isn't unique to EU immigrant communities either, I've seen the exact same pattern in Indonesia. Many (I want to stress: many, not most, but certainly too many) immigrant groups are remarkably insular and resist integrating in any meaningful way, even multiple generations in. They don't learn the language, don't adopt the host country's customs, and make essentially zero effort to become part of the society they live in. This gets worse where there's already a large existing community of the same background, those often calcify into enclaves where you're functionally not living in the host country at all anymore.
At a certain point, we also have to admit that some immigrants are the source of the problem.
Where I land is this: host countries should expect integration from long-term and permanent residents, and should actively support it via language access, civic education, real investment in helping people become part of the society they're settling into, rather than leaving newcomers to sort it out alone or quietly tolerating permanent parallel communities. What that integration looks like has to be specific to the country in question, because "host culture" isn't one universal template, integrating into Aceh's legal and religious framework is a very different thing from integrating into Sweden's secular, liberal one, and I'm not pretending otherwise.
But in both cases, multiculturalism shouldn't mean a one-way street where only the migrant's culture is expected to remain untouched and is treated as a holy thing while the host culture is expected to bend indefinitely until it, too, warps into something it never was. If you've chosen to build a life somewhere, the society you've moved to should welcome you in, but you should also be expected to actually become part of it. We shouldn't have to walk around on eggshells when we say that people should integrate, this should be the expectation for anyone looking to form a permanent life in a country they live in.
Refugees are a different case, since they didn't choose displacement, but even there once return is no longer realistic and a person has built a long-term life in the host country, the same logic on integration eventually applies to them as well even if the urgency and framing should differ from voluntary migration.
On a side note (and this is more of my own personal problem), I'd rather not see any kind of Sharia-like culture anywhere near me ever again, that crap is stone-age level bullshit that deserves to go extinct forever.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5lZPWNFizQ
Of course after his admission modern Objectivists began to predictably denounce Greenspan (Ayn Rand's favorite boy) with various "No True Scotsman" arguments.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48704714
Source
When I looked into this party when news broke a few days ago, I was surprised to find that the English article was comparatively longer and included the more appalling statements. Seems worrying that their narrative on the native version appears to be working
Does this apply to immigrants?
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 company and run it for one particular set of reasons but not for other causes that someone believes in, but in the end I just don't want my money supporting anti-people causes.
[0] https://mullvad.net/en/about
[1] If it was a small amount, say less than 5% or maybe 10%, I might have decided differently. But it's still millions, so probably not.
> obviously Berntsson has every right to his opinions and to express them
Indeed.
> and I also appreciate that someone can have control over an opinionated company and run it for one particular set of reasons but not for other causes that someone believes in
That is exactly the case.
> but in the end I just don't want my money supporting anti-people causes.
As is your right. Daniel made his choice and now you make yours, as a number of other people in this thread has done. Some believe this party is left-wing, others right-wing. Some approve of it, others don't. Personally I don't, and as I've said elsewhere in this thread I wish he hadn't donated. As do many of our colleagues. To be fair though, there are also colleagues who do seem to approve. And then there are those who don't seem to care either way.
Still, I'm glad you recognize the possibility that Daniel and I are able to keep our personal opinions separate from the mission of our company. This is something we live in our daily work as well. As a workplace I'm glad we're not a monoculture of 100% like-minded individuals.
But if you're tolerant of someone in your workplace that wants to make it a monoculture, and then succeeds in doing so, will you remain glad?
I get that you disagree with his choice, as do I. But please recognize that we've built this company together over 17 years. To suggest that you know better than me that he wants to create a monoculture at our workplace is ridiculous.
I'm not sure why you're arguing this point though. It seems we both believe he made the wrong choice?
And given the party Daniel supports, saying he doesn't want a monoculture... it seems like you are being naive. There are lots and lots of right-wing people in the USA that over the years never said far right things... but their actions have shown a different story.
I think you need to judge Daniel on his actions, not his words or your gut.
Again, I'm not defending his choice, but no, I'm not being naive. Over the 20 years I've known him he has demonstrated his values through consistent words and actions. I'd share details but that's not my place to do. You may choose to believe me or not.
Your choices are to either end a 20 year friendship and enormously fruitful collaboration or defend someone who has demonstrated quite clearly that he holds repulsive, despicable beliefs.
Imagine you were of immigrant background and your closest friend gave millions of dollars to a party whose sole platform is to strip you of citizenship and kick you out of your country.
I have no idea why people assume immigrants are pro-immigration. They're pro-themselves.
"They will also be forced to leave, even if they are born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedish."
Very empathetic indeed.
he supports a party that flat out talks about immigrants as parasites, let's not try to paint him and a good guy, it's infuriating
You should try knowing more people
Isn't that exactly the argument Örebro would make about islam and europe.
For a company that puts political principle so fundamentally at the core of its marketing strategy, it's astonishing to see this kind of stance being taken.
The man who owns half the company seemingly choosing to funnel his share of its profits to a political party that advocates the mass deportation of people is, in that context, something with significant consequences.
I understand how awkward the position you're in must be, but it's obscene to present this as somehow being a thing that one can be morally neutral on. In the context of rising fascism across the continent, it's dismaying to see a company that a lot of us rely on so decisively pick the worst possible side.
Mullvad only concerns itself with its mission. Our customers and employees represent a wide spectrum of opinions. You may not like some of them. Regardless, Mullvad's position is that privacy is a universal right, regardless of political affiliation.
> I understand how awkward the position you're in must be
Yes. Thank you.
this is kind of a confusing statement considering the source. if you hold that privacy is a universal right, but you profit from gating access to it (along with someone who appears to have directed this profit to an appalling political project), are you saying that this right should only be afforded to those who pay for it? or are you just cloaking your business model in a moral shroud?
Not at all. When we say we believe privacy is a universal right, we're saying that e.g. states and corporations that actively violate your privacy are in the wrong. We're not saying that Mullvad, you or anyone else are obligated to work for free in order to provide privacy as a service.
Does that make sense?
I'll admit holding the line like this, when most people don't understand the nuance, and most of those who do don't value it, is irrational from a business perspective. Then again we founded the company because of our political convictions about free speech, free press, privacy, mass surveillance and censorship.
I respect your choice to leave, and also appreciate that we're both making an effort to understand each other. I wish all disagreements were like this.
I’m upset about this to, but honestly I don’t know what other VPN holds Mullvad’s reputation for genuine anonymity. When I learned that y’all take cash by mail, I realized that is fundamentally incompatible with bundling and selling customers data.
You can read more about him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markus_Allard
Markus Allard has voiced support for the idea of large scale remigration on multiple occasions. On one occasion, in a debate with a Liberal member of parliament, he asked why the Liberal party "does not wish to deport 100 000 social welfare-Somalis?"[19] In the same debate Allard also claimed that "Sweden belongs to the Swedes. We have to make sure that we take care of our own damn people and we must deport these damn parasites who sit and live at our expense."[20] Regarding deporting those born in Sweden, Allard said in a podcast that "They will also be forced to leave, even if they are born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedish."
I will be happy to continue giving you my money then. Keep in mind the situation also sucks for all of us who have been recommending Mullvad for year, only for our money to go towards that kind of hatred. It is a betrayal. Now I have to start advising against it and explaining the money goes to neo nazis.
This isn't about opinions. Very large political financing is not a mere opinion. It has a much larger material effect.
I don't think it's possible to separate "mission of our company" from "large scale political financing", for purely structural reasons.
I think the legal and fiduciary concept of Conflict of Interest is relevant here, but perhaps only by analogy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest is quite informative.
In some business, political and legal roles, we deem certain structural relations to be a conflict of interest regardless of what people on those roles actually do..
The mere potential for excessive improper influence arising from the structure of their relationships and roles is what creates the deemed conflict.
As the owners of a company making substantial profit like Mullvad, you always had the potential capability to financially influence political outcomes on a scale which most your customers cannot, in ways that may seriously harm some of your customers and to be potentially against the stated mission of your company.
I think the relationship between running a company with an openly advertised public mission, or even an implied mission in the minds of customers, while in another role (wealthy private citizen) being able to make a substantial material action against the same mission, should be recognised as inherently a conflict of interest. But obviously it's one we can't avoid, as long as we allow people to get rich from a mission-driven company.
What we can do, is recognise that if someone actually takes a large material action against the company's mission, then they have gone a step further and demonstrated the conflict of interest.
We generally favour free speech, including political donations. But when the money for very large political financing comes mostly from customers who, by virtue of the advertising and marketing of the company's mission, are led to believe they are supporting the company's mission?
In my view, at that point the customers are being tricked into paying for something while their money is paying for something else which opposes the thing they thought they were funding.
At the least, it should be dealt with in a similar way that conflicts of interest are dealt with when, for example, directing multiple companies: By making sure everyone knows, so other people are able to consent or not on the major conflict issues those other people might have a view on. The analogy for customers is their consent shown by their informed decision to become or remain customers.
In Mullvad's situation, that would mean Mullvad should explain to customers, embedded clearly within it's public marketing of the company missions and values, that one of its current major owners receiving customer funds by way of profit, is the main financier of a political party which sponsors remigration in Sweden. Because that is clearly a thing some customers care about when evaluating whether to pay for Mullvad's services from now on. You know that, I know that, so there's no legitimate excuse for not letting customers who would care know.
Then, as you said, customers will be free to choose.
That's an interesting angle!
> What we can do, is recognise that if someone actually takes a large material action against the company's mission, then they have gone a step further and demonstrated the conflict of interest.
As far as I understand Daniel doesn't believe his donation materially harms Mullvad's mission. I am undecided and need more information. I highly doubt he would donate if he believed it would be antithetical to Mullvad's mission, given that the company is founded on our shared values around privacy. I'll ask him.
He clearly is willing to spend large sums on the party's views, and if he can use his influence and access in Mullvad to achieve his party's stated goals, will he?
It is asking a lot to trust someone who espouses what he does to maintain Mullvad's founding values, and not to exploit Mullvad in pursuit of ideas he values at a very high monetary level.
I have zero confidence someone supporting what he does and thinks the way he does will protect my traffic, and I sadly cannot use or recommend Mullvad any longer.
Not a chance. He is probably the most principled individual I know. Consider our consistent refusal to use Mullvad's platform to promote anything but messaging around free speech, free press, mass surveillance, censorship and privacy. Or our consistent refusal to sell to the horde of venture capitalists, private equity and competitors who have approached us through the years. We're doing this for a small set of political issues, on which we share values.
> It is asking a lot to trust someone who espouses what he does to maintain Mullvad's founding values, and not to exploit Mullvad in pursuit of ideas he values at a very high monetary level.
I'm biased, and have more information than you, but I disagree. We have a 17 year track record.
> I have zero confidence someone supporting what he does and thinks the way he does will protect my traffic, and I sadly cannot use or recommend Mullvad any longer.
I'm sorry to hear that.
It can only means that Daniel is setting up a trap with Mullvad.
Doesn't really sound all that far-right to me. Nationalist, sure.
I'm not Swedish though, so I would be interested in the thoughts of those who are actually affected by Örebropartiet's policies.
> Some of its key issues include lowered wages for politicians, ending the tax payer funding of various sculptures, monuments and art, large scale remigration, a stricter immigration policy, and free dental care.
> Remigration is a far-right concept referring to ethnic cleansing via mass deportation of non-white minority populations [...] to their place of racial ancestry
Sweden is the only country I'm aware of that has a Wikipedia page specifically about this incredibly niche local phenomenon which by the way has no correlation to anything being discussed here at all.
Scroll to the bottom...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Grenade_attacks_by_co...
And we're led to believe that Sweden has been under sustained attacks pretty much annually, except for the years between 1994 and 2002...?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_grenade_attacks_in_Swe...
which is literally kicking out people who don't look or sounds like me, out of the country.
Whenever that has happened it has been rather bad for most parties.
Or, more accurately, people who weren't born there (particularly first generation immigrants). No one's talking about legitimately doing deportations via family guy race cards.
- Markus Allard
Because, that is pretty core to the Swedish cultural identity.
Parallel societies have never been found to be a positive thing as far as I can tell.
What I don't understand is why integration is so poor in sweden(and the netherlands) compared to the UK. Outcomes for second generation swedes immigrant are terrible in education and employment.
There was a recent case where city of Malmo was building a hospital; during the building of the hospital it was decided that a splice of the oldest tree in the world would be installed.
A very expensive life-support system was developed and an enormous amount of money paid for the splice. (not including the life support system, which was also an inordinate amount).
The tree didn't take, and needs to be replaced.
It's called "Spruce Time": https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/skane/region-skane-har-lag...
That's pretty far-right by itself. The fact that they want mass deportations should solidify it for you though.
(You might look at it and think, "if that is success, then how you define failure"? but don't forget, it took all of 12 years for the German Nazis to go from taking full control to having their country completely devastated.)
German Nazis were socialist in name only, to appeal to the working class.
Well that clears things up
There's a reason the Nazis included "socialist" in their name. It's not because they give a crap about the plebs.
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.
Its 4chan politically incorrect. https://boards.4chan.org/pol/
And yeah, its as terrible as you can possibly imagine. And then even more so.
Now whether that's all true, has always been true, is propaganda...whatever, but it's easy for me to understand why sentiment has been changing as the spotlight is focused more and more on the abuse of the systems as opposed to the benefits.
I also think there's some 'hierarchy of needs' going on here, where as the economy shifts and more and more Americans are struggling to afford housing, groceries, and other necessities, it's easy to feel like you should be putting yourself first over strangers. Combine that with the prior point, and you have a great recipe to build resentment. Selfish, maybe, but I can understand how you get there.
This is NOT to say 'There is no xenophobia' or anything...racism in general is alive and well in the USA... but I have pretty sound-minded people around me starting to echo this mindset, and this is my best understanding of what's been brewing.
Humans en masse are selfish, self-serving, and tribal, so it's incredibly easy to believe that there is massive abuse of social services like SNAP/EBT, those delivering services are incompetent, and that we should investment more in fraud reduction.
However, the reality is that the US spends $3.75 for each $1 of fraud discovered. And, "fraud" includes clerical errors made by the government, so the actual ROI of enforcement is even lower.
So much of the propaganda -- "immigrants steal benefits paid for by hardworking US taxpayers, so we should ramp up enforcement spending to make more room for [white] citizens" is designed to simply reinforce our biases because it's just so darned believable to a cynical and tribal people.
In reality, spending more on benefits enforcement just loses taxpayers more money while cutting more US citizens off from benefits they both need and are eligible for. It results in the opposite of its stated goal and this is well known to any policymaker.
So if saving taxpayer money, and punishing those guilty of fraud, isn't the actual objective of all this toxic propaganda, you have to ask yourself what is.
in Germany we talk 350Mio€ vs 10Bio€ y/y
the us numbers will have a similar ratio
Migration is all a distraction anyway. Brown people existing doesn't hurt you. Whenever you think they drive up rents or whatever, that has nothing to do with the brown people, that has everything to do with the system that sets rents.
Some economists theorize that a long time Mayor of Boston (James Curley) used economic populism (taxing wealthy people of English descent and redistributing to poorer, usually of Irish descent) and anti-British rhetoric to reshape the electorate in ways that benefited him, even if it didn't benefit the city as a whole. The theory goes, he had a plan to drive out the wealthy people of English descent so the poor people of Irish descent would make up a larger share of the electorate and he could win more elections.
My understanding is that even most economists think that this isn't actually real. It's largely a couple of economists building a mathematical model, and then looking at cherry-picked examples, e.g., minority mayors during the 1970's and assuming that it was the result of a dastardly plan by the minority mayors rather than the result of larger social forces driving White Flight from cities.
In general, I think that mayors might make dumb decisions, but they largely do it because they think it will be good for the city and are wrong, not because they are twirling their mustache and cackling away.
And the demand is not just for doctors and other highly credentialed labor. The most nativist work on the Mariel Boatlift (3) (by Borjas) only found a decrease in wages for native-born high-school dropouts, and the general consensus of other economists seems to be that his work was faulty. The general consensus on Mariel (cite fn2 again) is that it was good, economically, for the native-born people in the Miami labor force when an additional 7% of the labor force suddenly arrived as immigrants over the course of a few months.
1: How much housing can be built legally is the key factor here. Immigrants can drive up the prices if no more housing can be built but that's just another way of saying that "no more housing can be built" is a really terrible policy that is enormously destructive. If building housing is relatively easy, then it doesn't drive up prices. In fact, immigrant labor is often used to build this new housing. Don't let your area become like the Bay Area and you'll be fine.
2: Wearing my physics hat, I am not comfortable saying that anything in economics is actually proven.
When people are added to the economy, demand increases, including demand for more labor.
The downward pressure on wages that one might intuitively expect from immigrant labor is basically erased by those increases in demand. It's self-reinforcing.
I'm pretty sure he meant that what used to be a far-right view is now considered mainstream. Which is true, since even the EU Parliament has now begun passing laws vs migrants, and governments all across Western Europe are now taking steps against migrants.
> Brown people existing doesn't hurt you.
Correct, and I'm one of them. Unfortunately some abhorrent elements of our culture, traditions and values hurt erstwhile peaceful societies.
Why did you feel the need to say "Brown people" instead of migrants? Are you trying to play the racist card? Poles are white and when they migrated en mass to Britain they were also making locals very unhappy.
Adjusting for purchasing power parity, GDP per capita in Poland isn't far behind the UK.
Likewise, it was a labour union in Georgia that lobbied to get Koreans deported from the US. It should be unsurprising that those who hold to the Lump of Labor economic school should oppose immigration and that's quite popular among the left-wing.
Don't make the mistake of assuming moderator omniscience (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...)! - we don't see most of what gets posted to HN, and we mostly don't read the threads sequentially.
When this comes up, it's usually because someone (yourself in this case) saw X getting moderated and Y not getting moderated, and derived signal from that, when in fact it is nearly always noise.
By deriving signal, I mean bogus conclusions such as "the mods treat X side harder than Y side", or "the mods must secretly be aligned with Y". This is all non sequitur. Overwhelmingly, what you're seeing is randomness (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clustering_illusion) - but especially easy to overinterpret because of the strong feelings generated by the underlying topic.
There's a well-established process for letting the mods know about posts that might need moderator attention - see https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
I do like a good political debate, but it was a bad call unflagging a politically charged topic which has no chance to develop into a productive discussion if minimum moderating standards can't be met.
In Sweden, brown people are heavily overrepresented in violent crime, so many people are getting hurt.
Obligatory disclaimer: the problem is not caused by skin color, but by a complex mess of poverty, lack of opportunity, societal attitudes within and against immigrant groups, etc. But voters hearing about a steady drum beat of robberies, rapes, drive by shootings (yes, in Sweden!) don't really care.
Scapegoating entire skin colors for systemic failures doesn't seem like it's going to make things better for anyone.
Yes, existing doesn't hurt. But when you import mass amounts of people who don't talk your countries language, have no intention of learning, and have no intention of getting a job, and on top of it are intensely religious supporting a religion which is antithetical to your values, then it DOES hurt.
Western Europe has simply allowed too many Muslim immigrants in than they could ever successfully have integrated. Now Europe is full of ghettos of Muslim immigrants who don't get jobs, don't learn the languages, and sap resources which the countries cannot afford.
Note: this isn't about being racist or not, it's just common sense. There is a limit of how many immigrants a country can take, financially and culturally.
I'd agree immigration must have limits and don't recall any prominent voices calling for unlimited migration or even limitless compassion.
Being a union, one can hope the load of migrants fleeing wars and violence would be spread among all the states, in proportion to their ability. Economic migration is a more complex matter since everyone benefits from it up to some threshold. Where it crosses into an undeniable problem is subjective. If it negatively affects me personally then it's bad, especially if I can overlook all the benefits I accrued (like lower prices of commodities and services).
BBC:
About 58% of men convicted in Sweden of rape and attempted rape over the past five years were born abroad, according to data from Swedish national TV.
What happened is that the far-right -- and, lets not use euphemisms like "the far right" here, we're talking about fascists and literal Nazis (ethno-fascism is Nazism) -- have successfully taken control of much of our mass media. They've also more or less captured the government of one of the world's super powers. Those two things put together have allowed them to make their views appear mainstream.
This is exactly what happened during the 1920s and 1930s prior to World War II. And similarly, you were finding Nazi views expressed openly and proudly and being given a veneer of respectability. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1939_Nazi_rally_at_Madison_Squ...)
But they are no less extreme now than they were then. They are still fascist and Nazi views. And they still ought to be abhorrent to anyone who considers themselves a decent human being.
Allsides even lists the AP as left leaning, though I don't ingest enough direct AP stuff to verify. I'd disagree with them listing the BBC as neutral on quite a few topics, nowadays, and put them towards left - but that's just me.
Sure, there are right-leaning places like The National Review, but apart from the opinion section of the WSJ and Fox News as a whole they're pretty small.
A lot of the rest you list are not left leaning, but centrist (derogatory).
You could make an argument that some of them are "classical liberal" or "neoliberal", but that was the center in the US and everywhere else it is center-right.
Definitions are helpful here.
"Classical liberal" is what the US was founded as. It was a liberal Republic. Classical liberals value political freedoms, civil rights, and free markets. They are anti-monarchy and anti-authoritarian. Most of the revolutions of the 1700s and 1800s were driven by Classical Liberals seeking political freedom
In the origination of "left" and "right", Classical Liberals were "center left". "Center right" were the moderate constitutional monarchists. In the US where we have zero interest in constitutional monarchy, Classical Liberalism was always the center.
Since World War II, that center became a settled question in much of the western world. The answers are "Yes, constitutions", "Yes, political freedoms", and "Yes, civil rights". Though in many places, civil rights were incompletely extended and so much of the argument has been about extending them fully.
The other side of the argument is "the social question" which got rebranded as "economics". It boils down to how much do we allow power and wealth to concentrate. This became more and more of an element of the revolutions starting in the 1850s -- the revolutions of 1848 were the first to really feature a true left as it is understood today: socialist, communist, and anarchist. (At the time, it was just socialist. Communism as a theory didn't exist yet and anarchism was nascent.). And just to be clear, the "left" refers to Classical Liberals as "Bourgeoisie liberals" -- capitalists and capitalist defenders -- and does not consider them to be part of the left.
The center in the US since the 70s has been a neoliberal consensus which argues for allowing the Capitalist markets to do their thing with minimal intervention. And most of the debate has been about how much that minimal invention should be -- with the two sides mostly arguing between "almost none" and "minimal".
Neoliberalism is more or less a form of libertarianism (US Libertarianism edges into Anarcho-capitalism).
For all of the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, Neoliberalism was the center and was the entirety of both the Democratic and Republican parties. The "left" vs "right" argument was focused on things like foreign policy and whether we complete the extension of civil rights to everyone.
For most of those decades, all of those sources you just named arranged themselves squarely around that center. They were all Neoliberal. They all took rotating positions on foreign policy, aligning with each party based on the political winds of the moment. Many of them did include arguments in favor of the continued extension of civil rights, but many of them also included arguments against it. Few of them whole-heartedly endorsed that extension until after the fact.
We've never had much of a truly left mass media to speak of.
In the last decade and a half, authoritarianism, fascism, and neo-Nazism have seen a resurgence world wide. And in the US an explicitly fascist movement with Nazi elements captured the Republican party and then the government. Anyone with a political science background taking an honest, empirical look at the MAGA movement will identify it thus. That movement directly pulled from the Nazi playbook in their rise to power. Trump has often cribbed directly from Hitler's speeches, barely even paraphrasing them.
During that movements rise to power, we have seen large elements of the wealthy elite that controls much of the media align with that movement.
At this point, most social media sites are controlled by actors who either have explicitly aligned with the US fascist movement or have effectively acquiesced to it.
Meta has added fascist aligned members to its board and put fascist aligned people in executive positions through the company. They've also voluntarily acquiesced to the regime's requests to silence anti-regime activists.
Twitter is explicitly fascist. Elon Musk is a core member of that movement.
TikTok has been captured by that movement through an orchestrated buyout.
Most of our media is social media, and right there you now have the biggest source of news and information for the vast majority of people fully captured by the fascist movement.
As for traditional media, CBS has been captured. Bari Weiss is a part of the fascist movement and her elevation was part of their pressure campaign.
The Washington Post is owned by Bezos who has aligned with that movement and is explicitly exerting editorial control.
News Corp (Fox News and the WSJ) is aligned with the fascist movement and is arguably one of its originators. Sinclair group, which owns most local TV stations, is also aligned with that movement.
And to be clear, I watched this happen. I've long made a habit of subscribing to sources from across the spectrum and made a hobby study of political science and trying to identify source's biases by political taxonomy vs the frustratingly simplistic left / right spectrum. I used to subscribe to The National Review, Reason, The American Conservative, the Weekly Standard, and others. I've largely tried to avoid those that are blatant, ingenuine propaganda (which Fox News has always been) in favor of those making earnest well founded arguments. And one by one, I've watched them fall to the fascist movement over the last decade. Reason is the last hold out, truly committed to civil liberties and libertarianism -- though it hasn't yet recognized the fascist movement for what it is (or hadn't last I checked in on them -- I haven't had the time to read as much lately).
It's pretty clear that you're in the fascist propaganda bubble, based on your posts and where you put things, and that is badly skewing your perception of where the center is.
I would strongly encourage you to get out of that bubble.
I personally have individual beliefs that align with both of our two major political parties, which is something very few people can actually say, for what it's worth.
The days of a scrappy newspaper or local market newscast are over. Reframe your statement from "People in cities tend to be on the left. Journalism majors tend to be on the left" to "People who own media firms tend to be on the right. People who set journalistic standards for their outlet tend to be on the right."
I was caught quite off-guard by this new "open borders" perspective. It doesn't seem sustainable at all.
Look at the huge jump due to his policies: https://www.economist.com/content-assets/images/20240127_EPC...
The same was not true for Obama, who was actually much better than Bush.
Trump: "Border is closed. We're deporting people, starting with mostly those that have committed serious crimes."
How did it do that?
The main point is that Biden acted like his hands were tied and Trump showed that they clearly weren't, and that we already had the tools to effectively shut down illegal immigration (through the border, at least).
The in-effectivity was due entirely and directly to Trump interfering in the matter. How can a president sign legislation that doesn't reach his desk because the party in control of the legislative body is in the pocket of a man who cares more about his career than the nation's well-being?
- https://www.cato.org/blog/biden-didnt-cause-border-crisis-pa...
- https://www.cato.org/blog/biden-didnt-cause-border-crisis-pa...
- https://www.cato.org/blog/biden-didnt-cause-border-crisis-pa...
(Also, FWIW, those immigration surges were good things (for the US), and likely helped the US stick the "soft landing" instead of slipping into a post-covid recession)
It doesn't show up in the short term numbers because it is a long-term solution. But Americans aren't interested in long-term solutions.
One could easily argue that Trump made for more progress as far as the immigration courts being backed up by simply not having an almost completely open border like we did with Biden.
IIRC, the US-Mexico border was never open, but it was quite porous. People would come to the US, work for a season to make some money, then go home.
Then once border security started to be tightened, leaving was too risky so people would stay leading to a huge increase in the number of undocumented people living in the US.
I think there's probably some leftist argument against this system on account of how we're taking advantage of poor countries and something something workers rights, but I think removing the ability to leave, to go home is the worst of both worlds.
They run counter to the notion of sovereignty and local agency which we value greatly in the US
The irrationality of strict country borders and heavy migration controls will emerge as a heavy global challenge due to economic and climate migration and aging populations
I don't think we have a good answer for what replaces them, but I don't believe there's enough evidence to state that hasty decisions made after WWI and WWII should forever govern global human freedoms - and we need a better approach than war to renegotiate some of this
For example the Bible defined borders of "The Land of Israel" which are still fought over today: https://www.biblica.com/bible/?osis=niv:Ezekiel%2047:13%E2%8...
The "Eternal Treaty" between the Hittites and Egyptians defined spheres of influence and position of various cities
The Peace of Antalcidas defined the border between Greek and Persian influence and assigned various cities to different powers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_of_Antalcidas#Effects
One of the biggest drivers of strict borders was tax collection: they defined who could collect tax from which subjects. This was a common source of conflict and so anywhere feudalism was practiced strong border definitions were strongly enforced.
It's possible the grandparent is talking more about the idea of limiting travel across those borders. That is a more defensible position but even then it was more about the the costs of enforcement.
Trade routes had very strong border enforcement because the borders were places taxes were collected for example, and there were limits on who could travel various routes.
For example Venice, Genoa and the Ottoman Empire jealously protected European end of trade routes linking to the spice road.
> Allow workers to freely migrate between countries to seek employment without restrictive immigration controls. Demilitarize the border, end all immigrant detention and deportations, immediate amnesty for all immigrants regardless of current immigration status, and provide access to jobs, labor rights, and social services to all immigrants.
Note they say “to seek employment” and “without restrictive border controls”, not “for any purpose” and “without border controls”. This does not mean they’re advocating to let in convicted murderers or people who just want to migrate for welfare benefits. Calling it “open borders” is an exaggeration in absolute terms, though it is for sure accurate as a relative comparison to what we have now.
Also, their political party, as such, is the Democrats. DSA is not a political party. But yeah they are members of DSA as well as being Democrats.
It's a very prevalent idea among US immigration activists and left-leaning people.
> what do they support exactly
Generally speaking, that people can move anywhere, if they want to. This article/interview/book covers it in more depth:
> Markus Allard initiated heavy debate in 2025 by claiming that Sweden is "the land for/belongs to the Swedes"
> In a debate hosted by Studio3 with Liberal member of parliament Martin Melin, Allard asked: "why won't the Liberals push for deporting 100 000 social welfare-Somalis?" and in the same debate said that "Sweden belongs to the Swedes.
I don't think it's particularly hard to figure out what these are dog whistles for, and equating my vehement disagreement with it as being in favor of "open borders" is absurd.
I'm having trouble grokking your statement, but "open borders" is not a pejorative. It's a belief that people, more or less, should be able to freely flow across borders and live where they like.
Again, I am speaking from a US perspective. It may carry different connotations in other countries. It's too prescriptive to apply the same immigration policies at a global level. There's too much nuance and geographical differences.
Some groups are a big net benefit to our (looking at the income the group benefits / social support costs) and others slight net negative. But once you take the economy into account it's positive.
So no, most migrant groups are not a big benefit. Especially considering that this is only taking the economy into account. When you take into account the societal disruption and anti-values that they bring with them, then its clear how negative they have been for Europe.
The Dutch were happy to do those jobs 50 years ago.
After every single "jobs the natives won't do", there's an unspoken "for the dogshit pay we offer."
It all sounds great until the last 40+ years goes away, with the apples year round and bananas, etc.
Going back to just what you can produce in your country is gunna be a rude awakening for billions.
You could force people to accept the low wages by removing all welfare but that has its own problems.
These are all hyper exploitative industries based on capital exploiting the poor. Which is something we both agree on.
They're effectively the same thing.
Nationalism is a right wing concept.
The idea of changing immigration policies is not unique to any political party. However the quote isn't that, it's trying to stir up an angry us/them reaction at a large group based on national/racial lines. Also "damn parasites" is somewhat dehumanizing (whether you apply it to billionaires or immigrants).
I’ve listened a lot to talks from the party leader of Örebropartiet, and while I think he would benefit from slowing himself down, yell and insult less, I really can’t see he being racist or far-right. More leftist actually. I think he’s simply VERY motivated/obsessed around questions like to get government less corrupt, much more efficient governence, and to stop major ethnic groups from very poor parts of the world get an unreasonable high amount of the governments welfare spending.
I personally do not ever see myself voting for (or otherwise indirectly supporting) a politician that speaks like that, regardless of whether you can steelman it with more neutral language.
The fallacy is that there's only one direction, so to speak. You can be left without being an authoritarian. Of course, the same goes for the right.
Nobody is calling MacKenzie Scott a parasite.
Firstly, you should probably cite that. Searching for it leads here. Hopefully, you didn't manufacture it.
But, while the language is unfortunate, do you really think natives should tolerate migrants who are not a net positive?
I got it from reading the Wikipedia article linked in the comment I was replying to. Specifically here, third paragraph https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party#Immigration_...
The statement has a citation but I did not follow it.
>"class-conscious populism" which according to party leader Markus Allard takes inspiration from marxist ideology
which would have been called far left not long ago. Still I guess "far-right" means anti immigrant these days?
Limiting immigration along with generous government benefits for citizens is an interesting new space for political parties not fitting the traditional left right axis.
One of these days we will elect somebody who is corrupt and morally corrupt, incompetent and poorly educated and who'll promise to screw us over many times and in many positions, and we will let him just do so so that there are concentration camps for the brown people.
It's not entirely clear what the argument which unites them is supposed to be. This unification is always in the mind of the white matry not the person opposing immigration. In the UK polish immigration was opposed, en mass, poles are white.
SUPPOSE there are large numbers of poorly assimilated people in a country, whose culture of origin is very different than that of the host country. What does the minor coincidence of their common lack of european ancestry show, other than to prove the point, they lack such ancestry?
White skin evolved in europe, with the peoples of europe, as with european culture -- that whiteness tracks this culture is a conincidence. (There's less-and-less european diaspora in america -- which, if imported en mass, might also enrange europeans).
The refusal to treat large scale immigration as a cultural and economic phenomneon, to try and insult opponents of this position with a slander of racism -- this tactic doesnt work any more.
All you are doing is driving those people to say, "OK, so its racism. We'll vote for that then." And the result is real racists are elected.
Do you have any analysis of the issues people opposed to large scale immigartion, from non-western cultures, and who would reverse at least some of it -- do you have any arguments that engage the issues they actually raise?
> and insult opponents of this position as racist
On the other hand, you treat the negative effects of current immigrant milieus as eternal and innert to their ancestry (dare to say: genes).
This way, you can look at integration as if it has to happen in a single generation and also, allows you to ignore the more important part of diminishing social mobility, which effects the natives as much.
Look at germany, where after WW2, alot of turkish "guest workers" were invited and stayed. After several generations the descendant of those immigrants are as german as you can be. They are still soft muslims, drink alcohol, engage with german bureaucracy, have a heavy turkish accent -- some of them are even candidates for the far right AfD. Please note, they migrated into an economic boom.
Isnt that utterly ridiculous? When time proves you wrong, it reveals your narrow mindedness.
And when you reduce immigrants to percieved negative innert properties, isnt that racist? When you broaden your scope, youll see the bigger problems are elsewhere, dont get distracted by bigotted populists, that are as clueless about problems or their solutions.
I don't think they did say any of this. I don't understand why people who debate against limiting immigration (and it often is only this way round) continually mis-represent the person's clear, stated concern and try and replace it. It is a completely transparent attempt, and no one is fooled. This isn't 2015 when an accusation of racism was taken seriously, because who would mis-accuse someone of such an awful thing? Well, it turned out millions of people would do that. The US President would do it[0].
As for the genetics comment, this is ridiculous on its face as well. Race and culture are in no way tied. But culture survives for many generations, particularly when the immigrating group is large enough. This is obvious. Germans in the 1900s could move almost anywhere in the world and become the best brewers in the region, not because they have the genotype of a brewer, but because they had (and still have) an incredible brewing tradition handed down from parent to child. Culture doesn't change because you move into another country. It moves because you assimilate, make lots of native friends, and learn the language. Lots and lots of people are not doing that.
[0] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kyle-rittenhouses-mothe...
GP ties negative properties to entire groups without differenciation, this is by definition racist.
To end on a constructive upside, if GP was really concerned about eg womens rights, any kind of stateful intervention should only target that. By being racist and eg trying to associate this issue with brown skins, stateful intervention becomes sweeping. By being more precise, migration politics that targets them all becomes social politics wich only effects some.
Can you see it now?
I have only seen you associate cultural issues and non-integration from mass immigration as being race-related. I have no idea who you think you're talking about when you say people are doing this.
Only if they're racial groups, and you're literally the only one trying to box people up by their skin colour.
A bad faith misrepresentation of the issue. The issue is why should existing citizens have to suffer the backwards views of the immigrant population while immigrants "assimilate over multiple generations"? Why should the host country have to absorb increased crime, feeling less safe, having their culture changed, etc for the sake of the immigrant population? Where does this supposed moral impetus come from?
To return the facor, the "moral impetus" comes from not elevating your culture as the only origing of truth, goodness, etc., but instead codify common basic needs, human dignity, etc. into law and sanction/integrate nased on this.
Im not saying that immigrarion is frictionless, the same way you non-racist arent saying, some undesirable negative traits (like crime) cannot emerge in the native population without immigration. The solution to native or migrant crime is identical.
Why you should take the hassle and hopefully adress social mobility and organize integration? Because of demographics and economic contribution -- the bigger picture yet again.
A country doesn't need to see its culture as an objective ideal to justify protecting its citizens from non-citizens that would victimize, cause discord, or otherwise strain the social fabric and institutions. A government's first and most important mandate is to act in the interests of its citizens. What impetus does a nation have to help non-citizens at the expense of the prosperity and comfort of citizens?
Protecting citizens with closed borders and potentially harming them in the long term with or protecting them with capable institutions based on individual cases? (Hope you see the racism trick question here.)
No they are not. Studies of Danish Ministry of Finance and independent institutions say otherwise.
There is the concept of social dumping where municipalities try to get immigrants on welfare to move to other municipalities in order to reduce costs and balance the budget, and those other municipalities are now complaining loudly that their budgets have major deficits because of this strategy. Schools also complain about this issue since a large influx of low-income citizens put an increase budget costs without any increase in tax revenue, meaning higher costs and fewer teachers per student.
A more recent study in 2025, ordered by the government, calculated that the cost per refugee today to be around 2 500€ per year per person, while work related immigration gave a positive benefit of 4 800€ per year per person. This report however do not account for increase crime, integration initiatives, increased cost to the education system, health care and other things.
It should also be mentioned that only about 1/3 of refugees ever becomes economical self-sufficient.
> Taking in a large number of refugees with significant lower education and overall wealth
Implies education and wealth is needed for the workforce. It is not. Just a strawman.
> healthcare system that Sweden has, cost significant more than what it produce in increased taxes
How profitable are swedish schools? Rhetorical question to highlight your dumb-think. Services cost money, they are not meant to produce anything else.
> There is the concept of social dumping
> Schools also complain about this issue
Which can also be explained with regular budget pressure from neoliberal fiscal hawks. I dont know the swedish specifics.
> This report however do not account for crime ...
Which allows you to vaguely gesture / associate yet again.
Unfortunately, you didnt link any studies. Searching for "economic contribution migration" on any scientific platform, comes out as unanimously net-positive.
Here is the OECD saying the same.
https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/sub-issues/economic-impact-of...
> It should also be mentioned that only about 1/3 of refugees ever becomes economical self-sufficient.
First generarion? And yet again you just glimpse at it without explanation. Whats the subtext here? Lazyness? Genetic inferiority? Without an explanation, this isnt an argument for anythig, yet tou yield it like it was. And that is dishonest. So understand better, i could use it as an argument myself, "see how bad systemetic discrimination is!?"
The internet abuses cognitive biases around cultural self-identity and foreign disgust and in the end, people group together, thinking they are the reasonable ones, the more educated...
In Sweden everyone must by law go through basic education as children, and all education is free, including higher education. The government get no profits from schools as there is no fees for the government to collect. It is all paid through taxes. Your are using that "dumb-think" of yours, assuming that immigration from countries that does not provide basic education for all their citizens will have the same level of education as people from countries that do.
> Which can also be explained with regular budget pressure from neoliberal fiscal hawks. I dont know the swedish specifics.
You clearly do not understand how Sweden operate or how local government functions, are clearly too lazy to look it up. The budget for municipalities primarily comes from local taxes, paid by citizens that live in that region. There are a national budget posts that get distributed between municipalities, but they only cover some parts of the local budget. Regions with a lot of high income and high tax paying citizens will have more money to spend than regions with a lot of citizens that are unemployed and on welfare.
And naturally I can give you links to Swedish articles that also direct you to the research study and the government study, in Swedish. https://frihetsnytt.se/invandringens-pris-vad-farska-studien...
1/3 of refugees never becomes economical self-sufficient. That is basic statistical fact. If you don't like the statistics you can pretend that math is racism or something dishonest like that. The plain fact is that taking in refugees has costed Sweden money, and the more refugees that comes in the higher the cost is. The math doesn't say if the cost isn't morally worth it, or if refugees children or children children will some day repay the cost, or if then it is worth to pay a cost now for a possible profit in the future that we don't know. All the math say is that there is a cost per person and year from taking in refugees that will not be repaid by those refugees.
I am not questioning this, or that math is racist. You are misrepresenting me, which is dishonest. My main point is why and what you make of it.
And you yield statistics as a definite conclusion, while you kind of contradict yourself.
> The plain fact is that taking in refugees has costed Sweden money
> The math doesn't say if the cost isn't morally worth it [in the future]
> All the math say is that [...cost...] _will_ not be repaid by those refugees
I assume this is just a slight grammar slip but i can think i can call the broader argument dishonest again, because like i said way earlier, by narrowing down the time scope, you are constructing partial views as arguments. Its like saying "brushing your teeth costs money, but is it really worth it?" I repeat, services cost money and integration isnt frictionless.
When you see immigrants as just people subject to socialization, that want a stable and fullfilling live, as much as you do, you woudnt make sweeping selective arguments and oppose immigration in total. The debate subject changes from immigration:yes/no to how/why. This perspective is missing today and i repeat/paraphrase yet again, the problems immigration are not soley caused them but can arise/effect natives as much. A broader discussion would address this too...
It's at the expense of women and their safety, for example. Between years 2010 and 2015, 60% of rapes in Sweden were perpetuated by people of foreign origin: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8330751/. That was back when foreigners made up about 20% of their population, which I think is now over 30%, extrapolating, the immigrant rape problem is likely even worse. At what point do we stop putting economic growth over the well being and safety of citizens?
Aside from that, this elevation of economic concerns as paramount is a strange outgrowth of Americas unique position of economic powerhouse with shallow cultural roots. You cannot expect other countries to also see economic growth as the metric that subsumes all other concerns. Harm is multifaceted and is very much up to local sensibilities to determine what they value and how to preserve it.
https://poddtoppen.se/podcast/985799618/markus-och-malcom
Kyeyune was one of the members - along with Allard - who were kicked out of the Left Party’s youth organization in 2014 for supporting the Revolutionary Front.
One thing to remember in Swedish politics is that the old idea of the Folkhemmet ("the Home of the People") is always lurking in the background: a political mix of conservatism and socialism - Sweden as a home for Swedes, but also an egalitarian home. Some view, both on the left and the right, Folkhemmet as peak Sweden.
Based on his writing, at least, I would assume that the party must complain more about immigrants who refuse to “become Swedish” than taking a racial angle. Although a racial interpretation is probably inevitable when viewed from the outside, considering the demographics of immigrants.
The problem with boats isn’t that they’re expensive - the Stockholm archipelago can largely be considered like a lake, not like the sea. It’s education. And I don’t mean university.
I mean: which boat is appropriate? How do I navigate? On which cliffs can I stop, and how? How do I prepare for a nice day out? Which insurance do I choose, which parts need repair and when, what Mai tweets must I do myself vs pay someone, how much should I expect in upkeep costs, etc
These are all very manageable things to learn, but if you’re not used and not exposed to boat culture you won’t do it.
But the problem isn’t money. $10k isn’t free, but it’s less than most used cars, and annual upkeep is less than a car, too.
In any case, Sweden's policies on humanitarian migration have been an utter failure, and I can't really blame Swedes for wanting to make it stricter. Obviously refugees are not the ones to be blamed here, but politicians who took in more than they could successfully integrate.
No. That is just false. There is a very well developed ferry/commuter boat network. [1] The cost on some lines are included in the Stockholm public transport pass. A five day ticket is €12/day. No need to buy a boat.
[1] https://images.ctfassets.net/4l7cjdaypzcu/UrqsczDUUVXP3wS6rU...
Do you have a source for that? I tried searching, but didn't find anything supporting this notion. I can find numerous sources pointing to the high prevalence of blonde hair in Sweden and other Nordic counties, but the US rarely even makes an appearance in those rankings. If anything, it seems like a point of difference rather than a similarity
There are no similarities at play here. Swedes are the native, indigenous people to Sweden. "White people" in the US are not native nor indigenous to the US.
In any case your statement clearly doesn't hold for the northern part of sweden.
Mullvad, like most other VPNs gave in in the end and removed port reservations.
It is super easy to set up, even on Linux and iOS devices.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. I keep along the effort, but it just continues to be impossible.
- https://theintercept.com/2025/01/28/proton-mail-andy-yen-tru... - https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-tr... - https://discuss.privacyguides.net/t/proton-ceo-endorses-trum... - https://tildes.net/~society/1ldg/proton_ceo_tweets_support_f...
> Dems had a choice between the progressive wing (Bernie Sanders, etc), versus corporate Dems, but in the end money won and constituents lost.
And they're using this to say, Republicans are 'more likely to tackle Big Tech abuses.'
That seem significantly more nuanced than supporting the right wing.
One of the articles you linked[1] also seems to debunk it.
[1] https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-tr...
Based on his actions Tim Apple openly is an ardent supporter of Trump. So effectively everyone here who has a MacBook was supporting a company run by by a pro MAGA ceo...
Of course greed and corruption might be considered a mitigating factor by some people (instead of seemingly doing it purely due to one's personal convictions and without any coercion which is presumably the case here
In reality they're based in Panama, and their parent company is Dutch: https://support.nordvpn.com/hc/en-us/articles/19441152966161...
> Markus Allard takes inspiration from marxist ideology[32] 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 of transfers that are a net negative for society such as those who, despite having an ability to work, live off of social welfare benefits, as well as those who work "made-up services"[33] that the party deems serve no societal function, such as bureaucrats, consultants, public sector communications specialists, strategists and HR-specialists.
It's practically a copy and paste of the ideology behind "doge".
I also highly doubt USSR would accommodate people who move in and don't bother to integrate into the culture and speak Russian. Ask people from entire countries where Moscow did Russification, and those people didn't even move in from outside they already lived there.
USSR was schizophrenic in that regard. Early on, it had https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korenizatsiia, which was quite literally about de-russifying the local elites and promoting local languages. Then Stalin did a hard 180 on that, like he did on so many other things (e.g. re-criminalizing abortion and homosexuality, or reintroducing paid high school). I don't think it's unreasonable to argue that under Stalin, the USSR truly switched from being a left totalitarian dictatorship to right totalitarian.
They had strong opinions of what was deemed "socially useful" work and were not above abolishing those pursuits they deemed to be useless.
All able-bodied people were expected to work (in approved roles) and you would be provided a job if you couldn't find one but if you refused to work they would deem you a "social parasite" and prosecute you if you didn't reform your behavior.
Somehow, people seem to forget that Marxism is an ideology of workers.
Not really, Marx and company were nobles, lawyers, etc. The ideology concerns provoking a civil war and taking over, workers rights is just the rhetoric to cause the revolution. The worker’s paradise never materializes because it’s not actually about that.
Not all of the component parts of the ideology are necessarily false due to their introduction and popularization by Marx. Personally, I find his writings obtuse and his beliefs abhorrent. There is, however, merit in the idea that the state should benefit its people, a large percentage of which are the productive working class, but it shouldn't be ruled by the working class. The state is its people and their culture, it shouldn't oppose their interests or subjugate and exploit them for the advancement of ideals alien to them.
Why not, though?
I mean, if you subscribe to democracy, the only way this would not be true is if said democracy was somehow subverted into a caste system where only some people are de facto eligible to be elected.
> There is considerable evidence that the reduction in hours of work is a basic goal and commitment of the Communist movement and the Soviet state.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP64B00346R0001002...
Being anti-immigration doesn't automatically swing the party to the right. As written on Wikipedia, "left-conservative" is probably the best label.
The Swedish far-left loves to, for instance, brand the governing party in Denmark as far-right, but they are actually also left-conservative.
It is possible (shocker) to be liberal and progressive, whilst also being pro-assimilation, pro-deportation, anti-immigration.
Yes, but the behavior in that quote, cutting social services, is none of the above. Using language associated with far left movements while promoting far right policies leaves you as a far right party.
> Being anti-immigration doesn't automatically swing the party to the right
Literally nothing in the quote I quoted is about immigration (though they hit that checkbox as well and it absolutely does swing you to the right).
By providing free healthcare and dental care or at least reducing out of pocket costs?
A very quick search yielded this short clip of Hillary Clinton:
https://youtube.com/shorts/Zsq32nNjNoE (no endorsement of overlays/etc intended, just the first result in the search)
USSR notably banned abortions for 20 years under Stalin, and homosexual intercourse for most of its existence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_N._Haldeman
"The technocracy movement proposed replacing partisan politicians and business people with scientists and engineers who had the technical expertise to manage the economy"
"Those how do not work, do not eat" - Mao
Interestingly, psychoanalysis in the USSR was aimed at helping the patient to go back to work, for instance.
> For even when we were with you, we gave you this command: If any one will not work, let him not eat.
> 2 Thessalonians 3:10
It takes a certain kind of personality to become a founder especially more do for such a strongly principled company and adhere to it.
Now the apolitical appeal is fading. It's not hard to understand why VPNs, one of the most commodified businesses on the internet, struggle to find customers without that kind of niche reputation that Mullvad once had.
Sweden has had terrible integration policies coupled w segregating all immigrants in the suburbs.
The drug consumption of everyday Swedes is fueling the crime wave. Cocaine consumption is at an all time high. The former prime ministers son was caught w coke at home. But only the marginalized are penalized for it and forced to work supplying the rich inner city kids who get off the hook..
I don't care about politics. I will continue to buy and use Mullvad VPN.
I think that you do care about politics, you just don't care about this particular topic or policy. That's your prerogative of course, but don't pretend you are wholly above the fray. I suspect if a company's founder had donated millions to a party aiming to mandate backdoored encryption you would suddenly find yourself to be a very political person.
Daniel Berntsson is still involved with Mullvad and part-owns Mullvad's parent company with his co-founder.
Is that actually the case? I’m not familiar with this party, and it’s difficult to get a grasp on whether they are Nazi-level pure evil, or an otherwise reasonable party with stricter views on immigration policy.
I don't see any issue with your flipped argument, it's the same thing, no?
They also can refuse business due to political stance. They can even give different prices to different customers.
If you were kicked off of a VPN provider (or, even a site) for financially supporting a non-proscribed political organisation: how would you talk about it.
If a company was sniffing around to learn my political views, that would be a bit intrusive, wouldn't it? I wouldn't expect the same level of anonymity if I were the CEO of a company like Mullvad. There's also a disparity between "I'm taking my business elsewhere, good luck without my $10 a month!" (or whatever Mullvad costs...) and "we've decided to not allow you to use this service".
How large a disparity is depends a lot on whether a company has a lock on a market. Generally, if a vendor in a crowded market decided to turn away customers who are XYZ voters (as an example) I'd be more apt to just comment on that as a business strategy than as a "how dare they, they must accept all customers!" Like, if you are one of 20 VPN providers and you think you can be successful by turning away customers.. well, OK. Good luck with that.
If it's a provider with a monopoly that's a bit different. I live in an area with only one choice of provider for electricity. So I don't think they should be allowed to refuse service to anybody who is paying their bill, even people I vehemently disagree with.
As I understand it, the Örebro party pushes for deporting immigrants and has a "Sweden belongs to the Swedes" policy that includes deportation for even those born in Sweden if their parents were born in, e.g., Somalia. So basically, "we don't like certain people, so we want to use customer money to force them out of our country". That really doesn't paint Mullvad as the victim, here.
The outrage has nothing to do with Mullvad itself supporting people with certain opinions or not.
The problem I and many others have, is that if the founder takes our money and gives it to causes that I (edit: or rather we) find reprehensible, we don't want to give them our money anymore. Simple as that.
I will not try to stop you from using Mullvad by any other means than my arguments. Hopefully you understand now where we are coming from and agree. If not, just do your thing.
> the founder takes our money and gives it
No, you give your money to Mullvad, who uses it to pay expenses, including salaries to people who do work for Mullvad, and profits to shareholders. It has then long stopped being “your” money, and you can’t reasonably be upset at what happens after that, unless you want to apply the same reasoning I demonstrated, at which point you have a lot of boycotts to adhere to.
Flipping that back around, I'm glad I'm not a Mullvad customer that would say "I'm okay with a portion of the money I give you being used to call for genocide."
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.
What leads to crime is not welcoming refugees, it's leaving people on the back in a state of precariousness.
Criminal statistics and per capita would disagree
Hilarious. Ofc hard numbers mean nothing without a study by some leftist think tank funded by my taxes to frame the numbers in a way to make excuses.
What do you mean? Don't they benefit from Sweden's generous educational and welfare systems in addition to extra support for migrants?
Yet, in my experience, it's horribly difficult and expensive.
The CEO’s extracurricular activities are none of my business.
Would you subscribe to an excellent VPN service, if it was run by [insert universally abhorred brutal dictator from history here]?
Let's think of the other extreme as well: exactly the same excellent VPN service, is run by an almost-the-best-person-in-the-world who has just one small quirk that makes them not 100% perfect for you (they pat kittens not as often as you'd like them to do). Obviously there is a border between your extreme and mine, which border defines "use" and "no use" cases for you. And now: wherever this border is - should it be the same for everyone?
However the original statement:
> The CEO’s extracurricular activities are none of my business.
Basically says that no border should exist, and it makes no difference at all who provided the service as long as the service itself is excellent.
That is a fundamentally different argument that I very much disagree with.
I don't understand the point of this thought experiment. Are you trying to disqualify the idea of boundaries because they're imperfect (which is a very flawed argument) or are you going somewhere else I can't figure out at all?
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...
The feelings of missing out and unfairness are deeply ingrained and stock markets give you stuff. At Mullvad, you buy something instead. If that's a life-essential product you can't otherwise get then the situations would be comparable. There's loads of VPN providers though, maybe not all as good but I would also be considering my options if I were a customer and hear this sort of thing (I'm not a customer of any VPN service). For stock markets and banks, on the other hand: whatcha gonna do, just not have a pension and work until you know roughly how much longer you'll live and that your savings will last till death? Assuming you earn enough to put money to the side in the first place, virtually all options are going to end up being partially invested in things you disagree with. A bank account is a legal requirement here (there's also agreements between the government and some banks to provide basic accounts so you can't be excluded from society like that). I find it much harder to fault people for wanting essentials; the situations are not the same
A bank account is not a legal requirement in Sweden, which I know for a fact since I know a person in Sweden who do not have one. The agreements between the government and some banks is that banks must accept customers who ask for a bank account. They can't however force a person to go into a contract with a private bank against their will.
I will give you that it is a more significant choice to choose which companies one want to invest ones savings on, in contrast to spending a few bucks on a vpn. I would however argue that the moral impact from the amount of money invested in funds and pension plans are more important then the choice of a VPN, thus hold a bigger ethical question.
So, it's a question of "am I ok paying for this service, knowing that a portion of that money will flow to this political party and how do I feel about the results of that funding?"
all this “cancel mullvad!” nonsense is 2020 cringe all over again
It includes a short statement from the CEO.
For all the stuff about free dentists this sounds pretty right wing to me.
But if your kids spend the first dozen years of their life in a country, they should get to stay in that country.
If they don't speak the language because their parents actively kept them from integrating into the land's culture which they (the parents) consider to be bad in some way, they (the children) violated the laws of the land and have well-filled rap sheets, they go out of their way to voice their dislike of the culture which allowed their parents in and they live on welfare because working is for 'svenner' they are very much invited to leave on the first ship or train of plane whether they like it or not.
Instead of being in the country the day you're born, it's being in the country for something like 90% of your life from birth until somewhere in your teens.
It does!
Versus jus soli which includes people that are only days old...
> again, if their parents have no grounds for residence, it is typical
Again I'm talking about what I find moral, not what's typical.
And if you have no grounds for residence you're usually not staying there for over a decade. If someone does stay and raise a child for well over a decade, despite lack of grounds, there's a point where that child shouldn't be forced "back" to a "homeland" that isn't their actual home.
Also if it's more convincing we could stick to a threshold of 18 for right now. That would still do most of the job.
If you've heard the term "Dreamers" then you'll understand this isn't some weird isolated idea I have.
No AWS or Google Cloud if you're pro-abortion, for example:
"Together, Amazon, AT&T, Citigroup, Coca-Cola, Comcast, CVS, General Motors, Google, T-Mobile, Walgreens, Walmart, Wells Fargo and Verizon have spent at least $15.2 million to support anti-abortion politicians, according to publicly available political spending disclosures." from https://truthout.org/articles/companies-like-amazon-and-cvs-...
There are many types of marginalised groups, and many other reasons to want to use VPNs. Putting everything on a left-right political axis seems more than a tad reductive.
rule number one: ignore any and all political controversies, don't respond in any way. deviation is nearly always punished. unless it's part of some PR campaign with a side-risk of backfire.
You're underestimating the large influence of paid actors/FUD here. It's no coincidence that in this very thread, normally supposedly intelligent people conveniently forget that about half the companies they buy stuff from have blatant MAGA-like CEOs. HN didn't suddenly suffer from a 20 point IQ drop.
It seems crazy to me. Part and parcel of having a pluralistic society is that we treat each other the same in public-facing parts of life without regard for stuff like sex, political positions, etc.
You gonna refuse to accept mail from the postman who supports something you don't like? What about the ice cream shop?
The argument, if I've understood it correctly, sounds a bit like the common pattern of asking someone who tries to buy ethical products whether they're impeccable/perfect themselves. Like asking someone who is in favor of a local wind turbine whether they've ever flown or such. You can only do so much as an average individual
Whether $0.01 of every $1 you spend to a company goes to someone who donates to far-right views, is absolutely impossible to vet and this news changes nothing about it. Would every $1 given to ExpressVPN lead to less $ ending up with someone who promotes such views? The truth is, we have absolutely no clue, we can't know, and there are so many factors in play here that this news doesn't move the needle. Pretending otherwise is performative behavior to make one feel better about themselves.
The Örebro Party (Swedish: Örebropartiet, ÖP) is a local populist political party in Örebro, Sweden, led by Markus Allard. It holds seats in the Örebro municipal and regional assemblies, focusing on local populist policies such as reducing politicians' salaries, stricter migration, and free dental care.
Sweden has undergone a horrible transformation in the last several years where gang warfare and especially bombings have skyrocketed. Most of the new gang violence in the last several years is from migrants from North Africa and the Middle East, after Sweden implemented a generous immigration policy.
https://nct-cbnw.com/an-explosion-a-day-in-sweden-what-is-go...
There's nothing to indicate that this party is "far right" at all. It's a populist-based party but the stance on immigration is definitely linearly correlated to the violence that was brought in by immigration. Lowering politicians' salaries and free dental care doesn't sound very far right to me.
Where the Örebropartiet (Örebro Party) usually are called extremist is in questions regarding immigration. They are of the opinion that people that move to Sweden should not integrate but also assimilate, and quickly, find a job. For some people, this might sound extreme, but I would argue that more than half of the Swedish population (and its parties) nowadays share this view, similar to how Japanese people and society broadly want people that move their to assimilate.
And it's super racist there too, I can assure you. My father in law is Korean but lived in Japan his whole life. There's no way to describe what he experienced except racism. People just hated him for being Korean.
I have no respect for people that concern troll about some vague cultural purity to disguise their prejudices.
Well I'm convinced.
"We just want assimilation" is the palatable marketing term for "We would be fine arresting people at their immigration hearings if they are brown enough." Just look at the U.S.
What you said is the same. One is according to what your relative said another is according to what my friend said.
I don't think it's crazy to expect assimilation. We are fascinated with different countries and cultures and we generally consider it's a good idea they exist and are different. Diversity is strength. But they can only be different if they have their own culture and traditions. Would everyone be so fascinated with Japan or Korea if it was not for their culture? Would they be the same without high trust society that is made possible by it?
What's that mean to you? In my city, immigrants work, run businesses, pay taxes, have kids and send them to local schools, ride the bus, complain about the weather, practice their religion. I guess the only thing they don't do is complain as loudly about the government as (many of) the rest of us. What more could they be doing to assimilate?
Racism is one of those things that unfortunately crosses political and social boundaries. Some groups just hide it better than others by enforcing anti-racism as a group norm.
That's not a subjective opinion I made, that is just a textbook definition of what we consider authoritative right. Left and right mean things, and they don't mean what traditionally progressive or conservative parties happen to be doing at that time.
I don’t care what textbook you are looking at, I’m looking at (or maybe writing) a different one. Left and right do not actually “mean things” if you intend for “meaning” to be universally or even widely agreed upon. I suppose for you “meaning” may only be relevant if a certain group or class agrees upon the meaning, but the rest of us will continue to say and believe what we want!
> but the rest of us will continue to say and believe what we want
Who is we? These definitions are mostly settled, and where they aren't, there are fuzzy differences, not huge gaps of disagreement. It's a shared language of understanding where people lie on a quadrant of politics. It's socially useful to have that language when posing political theory. Again, this does not mean political parties are permanently stuck to their quadrant. What do you think Republicans mean when they call themselves right wing? Nothing?
> I suppose for you “meaning” may only be relevant if a certain group or class agrees upon the meaning
What? You seem to be stuck on an idea that I am making some kind of partisan statement by saying a certain policy is left or right wing. That is not a value statement on whether it's good or bad. I don't know why you are so heated about this.
“Right-wing” politicians are arguing for nationalization in some cases and wielding industrial policy like they’re FDR. We may see price controls and even capital controls before long. The oil market interventions alone would make Stalin blush. Meanwhile they are jumping on regulation in other places, such as AI “safety”, and have floated hate speech bans (to combat antisemitism).
“Left-wing” pols (admittedly in the face of immense hate from their base) are coming out for free market solutions gently guided by the government and deregulation so we can build faster. Outside the US, you have bizarro world Labour policies in the UK (they seem to be aiming to absorb the Tories), China’s roaring Communist economy that’s the global hotbed of economic activity, etc.
The traditional categories still seem to hold in Latin America, for some reason. But that’s it.
What exactly does the left-right distraction provide except for an easily abused method for enforcing a (tenuous, completely malleable) group orthodoxy? These days it seems like people just use it as shorthand for “enemy”. Any heterodox position is automatically of the other wing, preventing adaptation to real-world circumstances. Some positions (like a land value tax) are somehow both left and right wing depending on who you ask. It’s infuriating.
> “Right-wing” politicians are arguing for nationalization in some cases and wielding industrial policy like they’re FDR
Nationalization is a policy lying on the left. State ownership of industry is the textbook left pole
> The oil market interventions alone would make Stalin blush
Price controls on markets are authoritarian left
> are coming out for free market solutions gently guided by the government and deregulation so we can build faster
Economic right, mildly libertarian
> What exactly does the left-right distraction provide except for an easily abused method for enforcing a (tenuous, completely malleable) group orthodoxy?
No, they provide categorization to resist group orthodoxy. People are going to categorize, that is human nature. Without these, the only way to categorize a policy is what the parties happen to be doing at the time. That causes a group orthodoxy. There are people describing themselves as "more left" or "more right" as a shorthand to reject group orthodoxy. There are people describing a policy as left or right, regardless of which party is doing it. You're not sparing anything by resisting policy categorization, you are making things less specific and more likely to default to broad buckets.
That doesn't mean you can't talk about the policies in specifics, it means they lie on a very flexible and descriptive map.
This tendency to force everything into a black or white frame is what gives us politicians who run without platforms, on party label alone, and who then adopt unpopular or harmful positions when in office.
At some point we decided that platforms don’t matter, and if platforms exist, they must be orthodox. This is a problem!
This sounds like you expect very few people to do this. I can't speak for others but this was exactly the first thing I did upon hearing about it, and
> Where the Örebropartiet (Örebro Party) usually are called extremist is in questions regarding immigration.
is exactly the conclusion I came to, based on their statements about "parasites". Not the integration aspect indeed...
Same reason why US republicans say they are the party of fiscal responsibility despite being directly responsible for most of the debt of the US
Depends on "education".
We could use something like the political compass, but on that model we still tend to ignore the authoritarianism axis and just say everything to the left is the left and everything to the right is the right. Left is progressive, right is conservative.
Free dental care is considered "extemely left wing" now? That's just bizarre tbh.
If a country would decide to use tax money to provide health care services for free to everybody that's not much different than using tax money to maintain an infrastructure network that's free to use (like roads), or free police and firefighting services - and I think none of those examples are considered particularly 'left-wing'.
No more bizarre than the idea of free speech being ceded to the right.
Apparently even air conditioning is now a left vs right culture war issue...
They have been called Marxist-Lenninist by more mainstream politicians: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party#2021_bus_rap...
Your nick (for those who don't speak Swedish: 'dödslaser' is Swedish for 'death laser') seems to point at you being Swedish or at least having some tie to the country. If so, in what way does Allard seem to be such a threat to you that you portray him in this light?
On a more serious note: No, I don’t see Markus Allard or the Örebro party as a threat in isolation. The broader right-wing populist movement they are part of, on the other hand, is very concerning. The normalization of racism, vilification of independent journalism, widespread acceptance of "alternative facts," and nonchalant attitude towards the democratic processes within this movement are particularly worrying.
The point you're trying to make here is the difference between Hitler and the Strasser brothers, which is valid, but irrelevant in this context - if the latter had won, the pile of bodies they'd produce would still be immense.
This is what I meant when I said it is close to impossible to use the term in a 'neutral' way, the nearly inevitable association with what happened in and around Germany when the NSDAP came into power.
FYI early socialists invented the word libertarian to describe themselves.
Authoritarian socialism is definitely a thing, but no, they don't automatically go hand in glove.
It should be added that the area where they are active is in the local government of Örebro Municipality, a place with a total population of 160,143 people. Looking at the political leanings of parties for a small local government with the lens of national parties might not give a very clear picture. Their strategy is also directed toward local voters, not national voters, through a strategy called the 12% line.
The point is, they want to round up lawful citizens and turf them out of the country because they have the audacity to be slightly foreign, or worse born to someone foreign.
that is the issue, not how much tax/spend big/little government.
People tend to forget about the "Last Man" part of Fukuyama's "The End of History and the Last Man", but we are definitely in the phase of the Last Man seeking conflict and fighting against our hard-won freedoms.
The US isn't the only country in the world. Sweden does not have birthright citizenship. Many (most?) of those to be remigrated are not Swedish citizens.
You say tomAtoe, I say pogrom, lets call the whole thing off
In europe, when was the last time a mass ejection of normal people, who've not committed crimes, beneficial? When did it end well for either the ejectee, or the remaining domestic population?
You say pogrAm, I say deporting illegal criminals, lets call the whole thing off and remigrate them.
>In europe, when was the last time a mass ejection of normal people, who've not committed crimes, beneficial?
These are not "normal people", they are not citizens, nor indigenous to Europe.
>When did it end well for either the ejectee, or the remaining domestic population?
Reconquista is one example of many.
Seems pretty cut and dry
given how much Sweden likes to preen it's past about being right and just, the WWII neutrality and taking all of denmarks jews over night, to then have shit like "They will also be forced to leave, even if they are born in Sweden" seems pretty opposed to what sweden likes to think it's self as.
Now if my quote is lies, I will retract it, but the source is here: https://x.com/AllardKlipp/status/2060109271635771457
Many governments ignored people's will for many years.
Some new political parties want to fix that, is reasonable enough.
I did not post my comment to defend him or the party. All I wanted was for people to understand the situation a bit better than they would by just reading the title and post content.
Any other verified sources?
>> Mullvad is a political company fighting for free speech, free information and privacy, with two equal co-founders, co-owners and co-CEOs who fundamentally disagree on many issues. Daniel's donation to a political party is private and not part of Mullvad's mission. We protect the right to express and access views we disagree with. We welcome anyone sharing these core values, whatever their other opinions. We are happy to refund others who don't, where we can.
To be fair... I'm not sure how you could take any other position as a privacy-first VPN. By technical nature, you have to believe pretty hard in 'people's business is their own business and not mine.'
I'd rather have a founder who believes whatever, but supports others rights to disagree vehemently, than one who agrees with what I believe but is less flexible on allowing others choice.
She went on a rant on how new refugees from XYZ were ruining everything.
That’s the immigration debate in most of the world. The moment a new immigrant gets their citizenship they often feel they’re the last good one and all pathways need to be shutdown.
I’ll switch to a different vpn. It’s one thing to donate a nominal amount as a private citizen. It’s a whole different matter to be the primary source of funding.
I am not sure "far right" is an accurate label. Maybe populist? Its a mix that would probably get a lot of support in other European countries.
I'm not personally inclined to be so strict about this, but there are people with objections against the Proton CEO who once agreed with Trump on twitter, or DHH (there is this one blogpost about his extreme views). Etc.
He has the right to do what he’s doing. Other people have the right to react and say “That sucks, it’s against my values, I no longer trust you or want to do business with you.”
As Mozilla VPN is white labelled Mulvad I think
The other owner replied here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48696800
Not more consistently than other parties.
They say they are, but their behaviour once they get into power suggests otherwise.
The party was founded after the founder was thrown out of the Left party for liking a far-left extremist group on Facebook and not backing down from that. Since then the party has evolved to also include goals traditionally attributed to the right, like large scale remigration and a stricter immigration policy.
The party also seems inconsequentially small, even at the municipal and regional level. They have 0 seats at the national level
Im not against people having different political opinions, I personally agree with things from each side and disagree with them both too on other matters, plus having my own third option that doesn’t fit any side. But I am certainly against a company marketing itself as a “defender of personal and human rights and freedom”, yet they are sponsoring a party that obviously doesn’t hold these values, this company will report individuals in the future to deport them maybe, 5 years later they are reporting others for disagreeing with whatever agenda that party is having, it’s always a slippery slope, never think it will end at xyz and that’s it.
Goddammit it’s like companies are ALWAYS destined to turn to evil one way or another, it’s just how long it will take is the question. It’s a reminder that you should always host your own, trust nobody, none.
No. Daniel made this donation privately. I own and lead the company too. Both I and several of my colleagues don't like that Daniel made this donation. You are misrepresenting the facts.
> this company will report individuals in the future to deport them maybe, 5 years later they are reporting others for disagreeing with whatever agenda that party is having, it’s always a slippery slope, never think it will end at xyz and that’s it.
You can choose to believe that, but it doesn't make it true.
> Goddammit it’s like companies are ALWAYS destined to turn to evil one way or another, it’s just how long it will take is the question. It’s a reminder that you should always host your own, trust nobody, none.
I'm sorry you hold this world-view.
People are surprised that a privacy-oriented businessman is right-wing is very strange.
"Millions" in the title is also misleading in this context - it's millions in Swedish Kronor, which is roughly $500K USD. A lot, but the title seems intentionally misleading.
I've also never really understood the cycle of boycotting things because you don't like how an individual spends their own money. Almost every company will employ people who have values you severely disagree with, and put money toward those causes. And turning to Proton as the alternative is... a choice?
Their party program is all over the place. They stand for free dental care, direct democracy and deporting immigrants.
Marcus is also known for profanity and foul language in council meetings.
An oddity in Swedish politics is that if a local party manages to get 12% of the votes in a constituency they are eligible for getting a seat in parliament, and can skip the regular 4% popular vote rule.
Örebropartiet actually has a chance to get into national government next election (Fall 2026) since their local support is quite strong. Times are weird
Less weird than you might think, Mussolini was one of the most prominent socialists in Italy before turning fascist.
How many hands does the money need to pass through before it’s considered okay?
So why haven't we cancelled Big Tech yet?
[0] https://www.commoncause.org/articles/big-tech-is-donating-mi...
Too many companies pay lip service to the current political fad du jour, and it's annoying. I like an apolitical company that does its thing and doesn't pretend more.
I am a very happy customer since the service is extremely very good, the vpn problem was solved and I am so sorry but the smallest amount that I pay even if it is 0.01 cent cannot go to support the far right(or the far left).
Sorry.
But now the problem is to find a decent vpn service that is not private equity or malware.
Plenty saying they cannot in good conscience support Mullvad, while directly and indirectly giving money to people like Bezos, Musk or Cook, among others, or supporting politicians from both aisles, who have the power to do much worse at a greater scale. I call this hypocrisy, and it is widespread in social media driven mob mentality. Intolerance about intolerants turns you an intolerant.
I like Mullvad the company, and I know that people might support politics I find despicable. Such is life outside of silly internet echo chambers.
I am dismayed by the anti-intellectual climate in the world as well, but HN is an oasis of empathy and curiosity compared to other platforms. Look at the people I've engaged with. Many of them vehemently disagree with Daniel, and with my position. They understand it, compliment Mullvad, and say they unfortunately have to leave. That's the way political discourse should work.
> Plenty saying they cannot in good conscience support Mullvad, while directly and indirectly giving money to people like Bezos, Musk or Cook, among others, or supporting politicians from both aisles, who have the power to do much worse at a greater scale. I call this hypocrisy, and it is widespread in social media driven mob mentality.
Good point. We should probably be more open about how much good Mullvad has done over the years. I've been so focused on just doing stuff, and not telling people about it.
> I like Mullvad the company, and I know that people might support politics I find despicable. Such is life outside of silly internet echo chambers.
Thank you.
For some people, the answer is obviously yes. For others, they'll judge Mullvad purely by its track record, audits, and technical design.
Honestly, you could say the same about the CEO of ANDURIL in the US - the Oculus guy...but he just cares about the US and wants to make money by making weapon systems etc.
Is he a bad person? Is he a patriot? Who knows, I ain't gonna play the ultimate judge game - but he did release a cool gameboy clone which is literally the closest I will ever get to his work... [1]
https://www.analogue.co/products
https://www.analogue.co/editions
I think these look a lot cooler, though they're less hackable.
Left wing thought patterns are biased toward less agency, e.g. the individual is a product of the system; systemic discrimination holds people back; one's trauma or neurodivergency is a valid anchor that makes achievements very difficult; failing to achieve is okay and doesn't reduce one's intrinsic value.
On the other hand, he might have other strong right-wing views that users don't agree with, and which might take precedence in one's set of priorities. If I like football and they like football, but they also want to kill me because of <other reason>, I don't think I'd want to give them my money.
1: this is why I don’t usually label myself as such, as I am aware that the world is more complex than red and blue thinking.
So who do people recommend now?
Allard is a traditional leftie, someone who thinks in terms of class struggle and power to the people. He also happens to be rather outspoken about the failure of Swedish parties on all sides to handle the problems related to the excessive migration Sweden and Europe have been dealing with for the last few decades. This has put a target on his back for the everyone-I-don't-agree-with-is-Hitler crowd so his party is of course 'far-right'. Well, if that is what 'far-right' means it doesn't seem all that problematic so I wonder why people always complain so much about the claimed rise of the 'far-right'. See what that leads to, you obsessive labellers of those who dare to question the desired narrative? When everything is far-right the term has lost its meaning just as claims of 'racism' or '*-phobia' have lost theirs.
[1] https://marxist.se/uteslutningen-av-allard-en-attack-mot-van...
It's a similar mechanism that cryptocurrency, or money laundering uses. It's very possible for 'good' users to be recruited into the pool for no other reason than to provide plausible deniability for the 'bad' members. If I wanted to run an ilegal operation like cybercrime or drugs, I would probably use a VPN and a crypto pool, and try to get legitimate users to desire using VPNs for reasons like gaming latency, or avoiding taxes on 1K/month income.
It's well known that Mullvad provides lower than market prices when compared to competitors, and that they offer stricter no logs policies. Yeah, maybe they are providing a basic privacy right, or maybe they are providing shelter for criminals. Tradeoff old as time. But with prices possibly being subsidized, it makes sense that their incentive model is not to collect fees for usage, but to provide a wide enough user pool such that the anonimity is more effective.
What's interesting is that both far-right free-market anarchist users and far-left Not for profit Free Software socialists appear to be shocked that their anonimity pools contains them both. Kind of like how the lights went up at the club at 6 am and you realize who you've been smooching in the dark.
There's no such thing as rightwing anarchism. In the entire history of anarchism, it's always been a strictly and explicitly leftwing movement.
but what about free market capitalism, anarcho capitalism, the austrian economic school, the chicago boys, Milton Friedman, Javier Milei..
Perhaps you can start here if you're actually interested in anarchism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_anarchism
Anarchism is David Graeber, mutual aid, Makhnovshchina, The Conquest of Bread, Zapatistas, Rojava, James C Scott, the Mexican Revolution, the IWW, etc.
You will not find "anarcho-capitalism" on the Anarchist Library because it has absolutely nothing to do with the Anarchist tradition. It's a total neologism and misnomer.
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index
Anarchism has always been explicitly and critically opposed to capitalism and capitalists (literally often assassinating them) and market-driven hierarchies
This whole thread is a bizarre conversation. It's like, saying I will list out some progressives and I include Margret Thatcher in that list. Thatcher never even attempted to call herself a progressive.
Left-anarchism is more prominent and more developed, sure.
Nobody except left-anarchists accept the narrowly politicized definition of the term “anarchy”. Attempting to impose this definition against consensus is decidedly non-anarchist.
You should stick with bespoke terms like mutualism and syndicalism that have a distinct meaning.
(It is annoying how humans do this with language, especially when it’s forced, but I guess that’s just how it goes.)
Can you find me a single example of a sizable anarchist community that doesn't explicitly reject capitalism? Try actually familiarizing yourself with anarchist spaces
- https://old.reddit.com/r/Anarchism/
- https://theanarchistlibrary.org/
Hell, even try asking an LLM. The acceptance of "ancap" as anarchism is an extremely niche and disingenuous position.
---
The attempt to co-opt language is not just typical language evolution. It's purposeful. Here's, Murray Rothbard in The Betrayal of the American Right
> one gratifying aspect of our rise to some prominence is that, for the first time in my memory, we, 'our side,' had captured a crucial word from the enemy
The Free State Project is mostly libertarians, but there’s a large ancap presence. You could also argue that many of the attempts at things like seasteading and crypto-communities are primarily ancap affairs, especially the seasteading concepts that revolved around building a “raft” of independently owned vessels. Apparently there was also something called the Acadian Community that has later been regarded as ancap.
The voluntaryist groups tend to be small local communities, and quiet online, but there are several of them in Western states. Apparently there were several that became publicly active during Covid, providing mutual aid. There was at least one online community run by a voluntaryist free speech absolutist (it was similar to Reddit but without rules except “don’t get the owner arrested”) and it had a respectable user base until he eventually disappeared and shut it down, for predictable reasons.
There’s also the bizarre case of national-anarchism, whatever that means! I doubt this has any real-world examples. Perhaps some backwoods enclave in Idaho that doesn’t exist publicly.
Maybe the problem is that anarchists don’t have words like “revisionist” and “deviationist” to describe similar ideologies that use the label, but which don’t fit your understanding of it. Like, Posadism is certainly some kind of communism, but it’s also certainly both revisionist and deviationist according to basically all other communists. Muslims who fight other Muslims are takfiri, but both are Muslims; liberals distinguish “classical” liberals from the mainstream, but both are liberals; etc.
Murray Rothbard, who popularized the term, and who I quoted above explicitly admitted that its an example of co-opting leftist language. It is not a "branch" or "deviation" of anarchism. It's a wholly independent movement that does not borrow from any existing anarchist thinker.
Surely just a coincidence.
Remember, currently individuals elected by you, from parties ranging from goodest to kindest, are voting for passport internet and chat control, with little to no well-funded opposition.
I dislike that Mozilla is spending their money sponsoring random political organizations while asking for money here and there. I dislike that EFF is sometimes busy with American politics more than internet freedoms, and I dislike that Alexandra Elbakyan believes in some kind of esoteric stalinism.
But despite all that, I still support all of them! Because they are doing good things that nobody else does.
There is a "what kind of American are you" meme that is usually applied to people who have zero tolerance for people with different political views. Of course, it applies only to evil people???
No! If you think that "canceling" organizations on the matter that their leadership is kinda suspected of maybe supporting something that doesn't 100% align with your last ballot is a good deed, this meme is actually about you!
Exactly. This blatantly obvious fact being conveniently ignored by hundreds of comments here, is not organic.
I'm so clever, everyone else is stupid
And then quite often people will still use their regular tracking-browser to access tracking-websites xD
It's a shame, because real racist extremists/nazis benefit from this lumping together of legitimate concern about immigration and actual Nazis.
It sounds like once the party gets actual influence, its real funding will be determined by the Swedish people.
Doesn’t this make the situation less harmful, or at least fundamentally different from say Elon Musk?
I would add that in practice it is even less significant that one may think. Parties for local government has an incentive to make loud declaration of national policy in order to present themselves as more legitimate compared to national political parties. However, local government do not have any actually power to implement such policies. Local government decide things like "should we build a new public bath house", or "should we create a local investigation if the that one large road through the city should a speed limit or 30 instead of 40". In terms of practical immigration policy, what a local government control is things like encouraging access to housing, specific integration initiatives that is local to that region, and other details for when immigrants arrive to that specific municipality. In this case we are talking about a municipality the size of 160 000 people.
Thus this funding may increase the probability that they will get more than the 5 seats out of 65 that exist in Örebro County Council, which they got from a total of 7000 votes in the latest election. If they manage to get 12% of the 160 000 votes, they will also get one bonus seat in the parliament which is a special rule in the Swedish election system. That single seat out of 350 could in theory do some harm if the election results happens to also be very close between the two blocks of left and right wing parties.
Small scale donors dont even get off without drawing my ire - finding out someone you know donated to a politician / party is like finding out they sent money to a nigerian prince to unlock their share of the inheritance.
I will gladly continue buying from Mullvad. There is nothing wrong with forced deportations. Without them anyone can come, claim asylum, and stay indefinitely if their country of origin doesn't want them back. That is simply idiotic waste of tax payer's money, and in case of criminals, also a hazard to public safety. Pretty much every Western European country does forced deportations, especially those of criminals.
This guy is your best blocker to this and will surely restore balance.
He repeatedly said his statement was politically neutral.
Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20260629105534/https://det.socia...
What a co-owner does with his personal money in a local Swedish municipal election has zero impact on the code protecting my traffic.
Did a quick research - calling a party that campaigns for a 30-hour work week and socialist dental care 'far-right' just because they have a strict immigration policy shows how carelessly people throw labels around these days.
Of course, you have to trust the company on that.
> They're known to run everything in RAM, nothing gets stored. You pull the plug and everything is gone.
> Of course, you have to trust the company on that.
So nothing actually physically prevents them from logging your data, and this entire series of statements from you mean nothing because it still boils down to "you have to trust the company". A statement which is true for every VPN provider.
Furthermore, Mullvad doesn't even keep an email address or a credit card on file. You sign up with a random number and can pay with cash in an envelope. If a company doesn't know who you are, uses only RAM servers, open-sources their code, and successfully clears a police raid, it's no longer just a matter of blind trust
Explain why remigration is 'extremist' and 'evil' when applied to those who refuse to assimilate and/or integrate into their host societies, who never learned the language of those societies, who express disdain over those societies, who claim their own culture is superior and will prevail, who never became self-supporting but continue to depend on the state for their upkeep? Let alone those who commit crimes?
I'd say it is those people who are extremist, not the host societies who are fed up with hosting unwelcome guests.
Some of its key issues include lowered wages for politicians, ending the tax payer funding of various sculptures, monuments and art, large scale remigration, a stricter immigration policy, and free dental care.
> While Allard has described himself as a Communist, and a Marxist, at its founding in March 2014 he defined the Örebro Party as "broad left". At that time the party considered itself a "local party that wants to carry on the labour movement's ideals", and "not interested in administrating the current society".
Was the NSDAP "extreme"? They got 43.9%
Their ideology implied at the very least getting rid of whole populations. They wanted to reset to an imagined ancient culture and rewrote history to justify it. Mostly imagined, anyway - Sparta was the one real example they looked to.
Up/Down (authoritarian/libertarian) is what matters there.
If he has high allegiance to the extant power structure then promises should be questioned.
If he is for radical decentralization and antiwar then I'm more likely to trust promises made about privacy and autonomy.
Then there's international confusion about left/right. Scandinavia is known as a good place to run a business because businesses regulation is much lighter than places like the US which are heavily regulated. In the US business regulation is "left wing" in Scandinavia it's "right wing".
We'd use a 14-dimensional vector for political positioning if we wanted to be studious but most folks are just looking for a friend/enemy distinction. Even many of the comments here looking to dump a well-regarded service if either "tastes great" or "less filling" is confirmed. The false dialectic as means of control and all that jazz.
Also what this group leader has done in Örebro to contextualize this quote
> ”I hope they will do similar things on the national level as in Örebro”, writes Daniel Berntsson to Flamman.
Are his public stances on immigration precisely stated as remigration, or does he describe a thing such as remigration without explicitly naming it as such?
About his quote from wikipedia "They will also be forced to leave, even if they are born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedish." which links to this video tweet https://x.com/AllardKlipp/status/2060109271635771457 can you give full context/translation?
Ask yourself the following questions.
1. Who decides whether you don't belong into Swedish culture?
2. Do the requirements change?
3. How many generations removed before your rights aren't conditional?
No, they have 8 people elected: 3 in the region, 5 in the municipality.
They got 4,46 % of the votes in the region, and 7,92 % in the municipality. And who knows, maybe they'll use that 5 million SEK to get more seats in this years election.
I just wanted you to know that while I dont support Daniels views, I believe you guys at Mullvad are doing the right thing.
I despise cancel culture, but I understand people want to "vote with their wallet" . I will be staying a Mullvad customer.
From the Wikipedia article on the Orebro party
“ Split from the left
The initiative to found the Örebro Party was taken in early 2014 by Markus Allard, who is also the first party leader. Allard had previously held positions as substitute member of the Örebro municipal council and district chairman of the Young Left in Örebro; in December 2013 he was expelled from the Left Party and its youth wing Young Left for "liking" the Revolutionary Front, a militant revolutionary socialist and anti-fascist organization, on Facebook and refusing to disavow it when questioned.[6] Allard has stated that the real reason for his expulsion was that he was perceived as a threat to the established party bureaucracy.[7][8]
While Allard has described himself as a Communist,[9] and a Marxist,[8][10] at its founding in March 2014 he defined the Örebro Party as "broad left".[9] At that time the party considered itself a "local party that wants to carry on the labour movement's ideals", and "not interested in administrating the current society".[11]”
Colours:
Red Black
This sounds like a socialist, anarchist or Ancap group that believes in borders
"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, ending taxpayer funding of what it sees as wasteful sculptures, monuments and art and introducing free dental care. 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 the party leader has described himself as a Communist and Marxist.
What makes them far-right?
lmao This is like the song Tequila by The Champs but instead of a long instrumental it’s John Galt’s speech and instead of “Tequila!” it’s “Marxism!”
https://youtube.com/watch?v=U_JFLb1IItM
It is amazing that if you say “Marxist” after any possible combination of words some people will go “oh wow that is leftism”
Utter gibberish, like a picture of Ayn Rand wearing an ironic Hugo Chavez shirt.
...as long as they don't have opinions that differ from ours, in that case we might punch em in the face...
Very weird interpretation of "voluntarily choose to not continue supporting them financially"
Presumably you want everyone to be forcibly compelled to finance the political parties they disagree with? And you would define this as a democratic society?
Is that somehow undemocratic?
Is anyone censoring the guy?
These are not contradictory - they are both essential freedoms.
[0] I suppose unless they have a very influential position and it's about a matter that contradicts main company goals
What % do you think a reasonable voter should accept a person donating to a political campaign before it causes concern about the donor's influence vs the median household's voice?
Off the top of my head, I'd guess 500k USD is about 1000% / 10x median annual household disposable income in SE, which I think would give the median voter pause.
For what it's worth (my own view): I think about 10% (~5k USD) is obviously acceptable, and I expect most anyone would agree that donations at that level are fine. I think your proposed 1000% is obviously unacceptable, and I expect most people would agree with me on that as well.
I'm not sure exactly where the level is that opinion would flip, but I feel pretty confident about those boundaries.
Nobody is calling for violence though?
In a free democratic society nobody is forced to do business with anybody they don't agree with, and free speech means they can talk about their decision without fearing repercussion.
And some opinions cannot be tolerated in a democratic society. An obvious example is anti-liberal/anti-democratic opinions as they threaten the system itself. You cannot have a free democratic society if a majority removes the freedoms of a minority.
And if I disagree strongly enough then I am free to take my business elsewhere. Especially if the money I hand over might go to support speech and parties I fundamentally disagree with.
Freedom swings both ways, and freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom from people thinking you're an asshole and not wanting anything to do with you. That's their freedom.
As a basic example, youtube started pushing a LOT of anti-immigrant videos. I never watched them since after few minutes it's obvious that it is clear ragebait, but I keep getting them recommended without showing any interest in them and they're all clocking in anywhere from 300k to millions of views.
There is virtually no way to resist the temptation of being anti-immigrant/racist/whatnot when you see abusive behavior exploiting the good will of the european union especially when there is state level abuse to extract additional funding from the shared support pool. This being extremely unpopular gives motivation to keep all of this under wraps as much as possible which only fuels the fire when "information" is made available on social media platforms where you benefit from blowing this out of proportion and then if you try to question it you are labeled which naturally breeds resentment.
--
Scrolled for few minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6-zhxpNsVQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARKZMX4iGZ0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmlI4ICp-OI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX-IKLSFH_I
I see no problems
I used to like Musk, now I see Tesla and am disgusted. Maybe he was always like this but the personal line for me was the salutes. I’m sure many others have lines as well.
And yes I do actively switch products. I left the Windows ecosystem for Linux and I will leave Mullvad for whatever else pops up. So it goes.
No.
> is it just a reflexive change of footing whenever you happen upon news like this
Yes.
> do you really switch
Yes.
What is the implication here? That because I did not know that a percentage of the money I give a company went towards supporting a party whose I that I find disgusting, I should keep supporting them now that I do know?
Yes
>or it just a reflexive change of footing whenever you happen upon news like this?
No (only when my personal screening didn't already flag it)
>do you really switch
Yes, where it's feasible
I think that's what a lot of people in this thread are missing. There are alternatives to Mullvad, so it's pretty easy to take your money elsewhere if you're unhappy with where it's being spent right now.
The counter-reaction to the reaction is so dumb. If you think it's silly to boycott a company because of a co-founders political donations, fine. But it's just as silly to try to argue people into not boycotting. Live and let live.
What proves the point is that someone suggested moving to Proton, whose founder (not even co-founder AFAIK) is outwardly pro-MAGA. And comments calling that out are the ones that get downvoted. This shows people are just pretending to care.
It's not silly to boycott companies in general, but this specific case it's silly. Not because of the reason, but because boycotting only makes sense if it's very likely that an alternative is going to be better in the specific factor that instigates the boycott. In this case, it's not likely, you have no clue whether an alternative is going to have more or less $0.0x of your $1 going to people supporting far-right parties.
Especially when VPN companies are known to be some of the dodgiest tech companies in general. Mullvad is one of the most transparent ones.
A rational actor will act on available information. It’s entirely possible that someone unhappy with Mullvad switches to an alternative that is even worse (on whatever dimensions they care about), and they just don’t know it. The question is whether they could’ve expected that outcome on a balance of probabilities.
I feel like the default assumption for a company in the privacy space is that they are close to politically neutral (0). Certainly skewing libertarian, but probably not more right (+1) than left (-1). So, if you see that your money is explicitly being siphoned to right-wing political parties (>0), and you don’t like that, it’s rational to switch to an alternative (expected value = 0).
Also, “very likely” to be better isn’t necessary, because switching costs are minimal.
Also also, saying that Proton’s founder is “outwardly MAGA” is really oversimplifying things. I’m not sure what your viewpoint actually is — maybe you’re just expressing someone else’s — but I’d encourage you to read: https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-tr...
That assumption here is wrong, because VPN companies in particular are known to be a lot dodgier than average. Maybe if we were talking bakeries, then I'd agree.
> Also also, saying that Proton’s founder is “outwardly MAGA” is really oversimplifying things. I’m not sure what your viewpoint actually is — maybe you’re just expressing someone else’s — but I’d encourage you to read: https://medium.com/@ovenplayer/does-proton-really-support-tr...
One can make very similar arguments for this specific case. Saying that the party in question is far-right is simplifying things. On top of that, a co-founder making a private donation to a party (two layers: 1. private 2. party) is less directly related to the company than a founder directly tweeting an ideological point (1. public 2. direct).
Honestly, the party sounds insane, I wouldn't be caught dead supporting them and would hope that any Swede reading alone avoids them with a ten-foot pole. But the response in this comment section is absurdly exaggerated compared to what any of the Big Tech corps that get talked about daily on here, and whose
I don't believe it's organic at all. Recently there's the biggest push in history of "think of the children" online surveillance, with remote attestation and mandatory identity coupling being rolled out at scale. Mullvad is known to be one of the top privacy-preserving VPN providers in the West, with a large userbase on HN, and now you get this very disproportionately negative reaction to what is realistically a meaningless issue: "$0.01 of every $1 spent on Mullvad might end up with someone who donates to a radical party, if even that" - just like, almost certainly, every other $1 you spend elsewhere does.
Source very much needed.
Founder and CEO.
It's not a gotcha if you're inconsistent from an outsiders perspective, we're all doing the best we can with what little insight we have into reality.
So you're saying the majority of the people here who say they're leaving Mullvad, have:
1. Not heard of Bezos' funding of the Trump family, or don't use Amazon at all 2. Not heard of Zuckerberg/Meta's [insert countless despicable things here], or don't have Facebook/Instagram/Whatsapp installed at all 3. Not heard of OpenAIs free pass on the Trump administration using their models for war purposes without limitations, or don't use OpenAI at all 4. And so forth?
Clearly, no. Because it has nothing to do with coming across information without obsessively staying up to date with every entity. The same people have come across much of the above information, yet continue not to act on it, despite most of them being magnitudes worse than this case.
- having the emotional energy reserves left to act on it
- fully understanding the repercussions of the thing
- feeling like your actions in this case will have any affect
- many other reasons you can't stay consistent from an outsiders perspective
You're trying to apply an objective measure of reality to everyone else: if they disagree with X, they must therefore also disagree with Y, otherwise they shouldn't act on X. It's an unreasonable expectation of perfect action.
and another relevant one: don't have the resources to switch. (cost of research and moving)
and: depend on other people whose mind you are unable to change.
i haven't found any other vpn providers that work like mullvad for example. (i think one has been mentioned here but i'll have to research that one first before i can consider it.)
i can't switch away from whatsapp or wechat because too many people are on there that i can't reach in any other way. my customers are using AWS or google and i am not in the position to change their mind, and i don't have the luxury to fire customers over this.
Maybe companies in those kind of markets will simply bite the bullet and start marketing their products as for one side or for the other in politics instead of trying to be for everybody. Then they can lock-in strong goodwill from "their side", and stand on more certain footing. Or maybe most customers do not care as much as online activists.
It's like the meme of nuclear energy help with climate change and the answer is "I don't want to solutions, I want to abolish capitalism!"