The IT company Mullvad’s founder Daniel Berntsson is behind a giant donation to the populist Örebro Party, which advocates “comprehensive re-immigration” from Sweden. “It’s sad that it’s needed,” he told Flamman.
~ https://www.flamman.se/techprofil-ger-miljoner-till-orebropartiet/
The wiki for the Örebro Party actually describes it as not identifiable as left or right and the founder was actually far left. It also advocates for things like free dental care and anti-corruption. So things aren’t as simple as purely anti-immigration which is very populist in Sweden.
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.
It’s basically orthodox leftism. Leftist governments were historically against immigration because of domestic labor laws. Liberals like to paint anything other than utter globalization “fascist”.
And no, nazis didn’t choose the “national socialism” because they believed in “socialism but national version”, they were anti-communist:
Socialism’, he retorted, putting down his cup of tea, ‘is the science of dealing with the common weal [health or well-being]. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. The Marxians have stolen the term and confused its meaning. I shall take Socialism away from the Socialists.
‘Socialism is an ancient Aryan, Germanic institution. Our German ancestors held certain lands in common. They cultivated the idea of the common weal. Marxism has no right to disguise itself as socialism. Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality and, unlike Marxism, it is patriotic.
‘We might have called ourselves the Liberal Party. We chose to call ourselves the National Socialists. We are not internationalists. Our Socialism is national. We demand the fulfilment of the just claims of the productive classes by the State on the basis of race solidarity. To us, State and race are one…
So basically they grifted on the name “socialism” to appease to workers, and redefined it as “national capitalism based on race”.
how trustworthy is this?
https://mastodon.online/@mullvadnet/116822244689326681 - I think they pretty much confirmed this.
Let me put it this way. I dont doubt he personally donated that money. They claim to get this from the partys own disclosures.
However. I’ve never heard of “Örebropartiet” i quickly read they’re the biggest party outside of the parlamental parties, though that doesn’t really say much in itself to be honest. And quite frankly, no one outside of Örebro gives a fuck about what’s going on in Örebro. No offense.
Nor have I ever heard of this publication “Flamman”, that also claims to be some old socialist newspaper. My point being. You’d struggle to find a more biased source of information on what they call a “far extreme right party”
Not to say what they claim is false. I’m just saying. I would cross referrence with other publications given their obvious bias
Oh cmon! I trusted 'em to not shit in their pants, what next? We discover that Torvalds and Stallman are transphobic?
Speaking as someone who does some work for Stallman, although he is right 99% of the time, that last 1% is a doozy
deleted by creator
deleted by creator
TIL kernel.org has a Mastodon instance.
My original comment was ironic but having a confirm that his political ideas are not bullshit is nice
The five million from Berntsson make up the majority – as much as 72 percent – of the Örebro Party’s income last year. It is also the largest single private donation to a party in 2025.
The money also seems to have been the triggering factor for the party’s decision to stand in the parliamentary elections.
(machine translation)
Fuck them. Not sure who to go with now. Paying monthly and not needing to remember to cancel were the main reason I used them.
Also, it seems safer to assume that all tech companies are rotten until proven otherwise.
AirVPN
https://www.vpnscorecard.com/ seems like a good place to check for alternatives although it doesn’t go into the politics of the company mostly. Still, their top scorer https://www.ivpn.net/ seems like a good bet.
That’s a decent link, thanks. Unfortunately Mullvad get a good score there too. As you say, the shady extracurricular stuff is missing.
Jesus. Fucking. Christ.
This is fucking disgusting and extremely fucking dangerous. Nazi parties spread like a virus. One day they are completely underground, next time you look they are a major force in the parliament.
Mullvad literally grabbing them from the rock bottom where they belong and bringing them into light is unforgivable.
I’m from Poland and we have a huge problem with these parasite parties. They managed to shift the Overton Window so far into the right that the libertarians are literally on the left and the socdems are the extremely far left.
FUCK, THAT MEANS I GOTTA GET RID OF MULLVAD VPN!
Any FOSS VPNs on F-Droid I should consider?
You shouldn’t use a VPN provider that doesn’t let you use Wireguard. If they require you to use their own client, they’re either up to no good or just dumb and shouldn’t be in this business to begin with.
You know who hasn’t given money to far right extremists? Proton and it’s founder.
I remember when people went ape shit because the CEO, Andy Yen, approved of one of Trump’s pick for the antitrust division.
Then the antitrust pick happened to be good at her job, so Trump fired her and people realized Andy wasn’t so wrong after all but still hated him.
Everytime I tried to defend Proton, I got downvoted and insulted over this. Got called a MAGAt and a neo nazi sympethizer. I was told to use Mullvad and that it was so much better and I wouldn’t be encouraging some right wing sympathizer even though Andy Yen never took any political stance.
Well who’s laughing now?
Well who’s laughing now?
nobody. because when fascism wins, everyone loses.
Proton has sponsored some French (?) rasist person recently. They have apologised for it and said it was a mistake. However. This is not the first stupid thing they’ve done.
PS. I’m no way a fanboy of anything. While I have been a Mullvad user for multiple years now, it seems like I have to reconsider that.
Omfg I am tired of this narrative, the guy signed up for their PUBLIC AFFILLIAT PROGRAM, they did not sponsor him. A PUBLIC AFFILIAT PROGRAM which anyone can sign up for.
Still does not defend Proton actually affiliating with them.
It was a sponsorship and Proton’s PR team accepted him. It’s likely that they made a mistake, and that what’s matter. Their product is based on trust, you can’t afford to make mistakes like this. Or other mistakes like the previous incident.
You’re probably downvoted and insulted because you made up a narrative. He straight up said Republicans were the party of privacy, and were shilling them. The backtracking ‘Oh I was just supporting the pick’ was Proton’s PR company coming later, after nuking a significant number of reddit posts from andy yen doubling down, as well as iirc the entire mastodon thread where he was doing the same. It was wild as fuck to watch in real time, we were literally joking in discord that some poor intern was probably trying to physically wrestle the keyboard away from Yen while screaming for someone to call their PR company.
That whole fiasco is literally why Proton no longer uses mastodon, because no one there let them forget the whole thing despite attempts at nuking the posts from existence.
This isn’t the first time proton, and andy yen specifically, has shown a troubling tendency towards supporting fascism. Vibe coding their apps is also a big warning flag just from a security point of view as well.
I’ve still been hesitantly recommending proton VPN to my friends, because a questionable VPN is better than no VPN, and most people aren’t willing to shill out money for… well, mullvad used to be what I recommended if they were willing to pay for it, but I guess I’ll have to rethink that now. But yeah, it was, to my knowledge, the best free VPN, though that’s a low bar.
He straight up said Republicans were the party of privacy,
You got a source for that?
Well, there’s his literal original post on X, praising republicans as the party of privacy against big tech: https://x.com/andyyen/status/1864436449942110660 When people lost their shit, he went on reddit and posted an ‘official proton response’, doubling down: https://archive.ph/quYyb (archive link because proton PR eventually came in start deleting things and creating a new narrative)
When that was deleted, proton claimed it ‘wasn’t actually an official response’ despite being on the official proton account and literally saying ‘proton’s official response is’, and a shitload of now-deleted doubling down in the thread that I don’t currently have time to find, but you can probably see them in the thread by looking for the outraged responses to deleted posts (or finding whatever the current deleted-reddit-mirror is, I don’t know the most up-to-date one atm). They then claimed they were ‘politically neutral’ despite that literally being impossible by dint of being pro-privacy, which isn’t politically neutral at all. https://old.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1i29k9t/proton_shouldnt_use_their_official_socials_to/m7csaky/
I don’t have time to really dig in and find all the deleted reddit/mastodon posts for you, but they’re still around because the internet is eternal, and deleting something only hides it from shmuchks who don’t know better, so I’m sure you can find em.
Except for financing a French fascist and a Brazilian fascist who is the son of a dictator who was one of the leaders of a fascist coup… You know, besides them.
They responded to that recently.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProtonMail/comments/1u05xs2/comment/oqgihvq/
edit For those that don’t want to click -
"You’re right to raise this, and we want to address it directly and provide you important context on how this happened.
Vincent Lapierre’s channel should never have been part of our affiliate and sponsorship program, because we intentionally avoid association with channels whose content could distract from our message and divide our community.
Proton operates globally, and while our services are available to everyone regardless of political views and our mission is consistent everywhere, our knowledge of every local media landscape is not. In this case, our team didn’t have enough context about the French space to make a well-informed decision, and that’s on us.
We also want to be straight about what a placement like this is and isn’t. An affiliate or sponsorship arrangement is a transactional placement for awareness, not an endorsement of a creator’s views. In the case of Vincent Lapierre, this was a single video sponsorship, not a partnership.
But that distinction doesn’t excuse what happened here. The responsibility to vet who we put our name next to is ours, and we didn’t meet it this time. We’re now reviewing our vetting process and our guidelines for our marketing agencies to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
If you see something like this again, tell us. We rely on your feedback and vigilance."
Yes, they likely brought on a PR person after their last major fuck up. It directly contradicts what those youtubers said about the sponsorship. Who knows who is telling the truth.
That AI-generated apology is better than doubling down like the last time, but they shouldn’t be treated as this “oh they are clean and haven’t been caught doing anything”.
Though they didn’t apologize for the Brazilian fascist support because that didn’t go viral like the French one. They might still be paying him.
Is this /s because proton sponsored Far right Youtuber Vincent Lapierre and then had to apologize for it?
They never sponsored him. He filled out some form online and it was an automated process. They also didn’t know who the fuck that guy is. I’m French Canadian and even I don’t know who he is. I never heard of him.
What in the serious fuck are you talking about, Proton just got caught giving money to far right influencers. “Accidentally” of course. They promise not to do it again, lol.
Also Andy’s comment about Trump being anti-trust has aged like fine milk. It is almost like you should just keep your mouth shut when you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about
Perhaps you should stop giving corporations your hard earned money.
Everytime I tried to defend Proton, I got downvoted and insulted over this. Got called a MAGAt and a neo nazi sympethizer.
Welcome to Lemmy, either conform or get ousted. It’s almost like Karl Marx is here with us today.
People just don’t go read the sources and think for themselves and let the communities dictate how to think.
Anyway, I don’t care. Because I know I was right.
Is express VPN ok as an alternative or am I a dumbass?
From another user’s comment earlier
Kape Technologies plc (formerly Crossrider Ltd.) is a British-Israeli company owned by businessman Teddy Sagi. Kape owns the VPN service and cybersecurity companies CyberGhost, Private Internet Access, ZenMate, ExpressVPN, and Intego.
So, owned by Isreal. I didn’t know PIA was owned by the same and that’s what I’ve been using. So maybe I’ll look into AirVPN? Or IVPN is another one mentioned
AirVPN is based in Gibraltar and hence under British Law, meaning information courts and secret trawling surveillance court orders.
IVPN is Italian and Italy is a 14 eyes member. No idea how bad or not their surveillance legislation is, but it very unlikely they’re as bad as the UK (which was even worse than the US according to the Snowden Revelations and none of that shit was walked back, quite the contrary).
Do you use a VPN service, and if so which one? It’s seemingly become a bigger and bigger issue… or maybe I’m just not informed enough about privacy/security; is it a trade off between morality and privacy? Because somehow that doesn’t feel correct. Should I just choose the most secure and cheapest option, because it’s all fucked anyway?
Like at this point, what would be the best option? My personal threat-model isn’t that real, but still… what should I be comparing when looking for “the best option”?
It’s what I use, but I heard it was bought by a shady company a couple years ago. I’m afraid to check. It is or was one of the most secure and verifi3d provider around and resides outside the 5 and 14 eyes network.
You’re a dumbass. In general, if you see ads for it, it’s bad.
Check AirVPN, IVPN, and/or cryptostorm
Right after I paid for another year.
Claiming immigration policy in general is fascist is just an ignorant perversion of the word that lessens its weight.
The fascist dog whistle is the word “re-immigration”, it’s just another word for ethnic cleansing.
But that’s such a vague term that it’s meaningless to draw any conclusion without seeing what the proposal is.
For example, is the re-immigration voluntary or forced? To what degree does it apply? For example, is it just for illegal immigrations, legal immigrants, or does it also include naturalized citizens? Is it race, ethnicity, religious based, or is it based on universal secular principles? Does it ensure safety of the people re-immigrating? There is a lot to it.
Depending on this is implemented, there might not be any issue with it at all. For example, I’m an Iraqi immigrant in the US. I have a lot of family in Sweden. There are a lot of Iraqi immigrants who don’t like living in Sweden and would like to return to Iraq, however, they can’t either because they lack the means to do so or they’re not sure if their safety is guaranteed. There are people who like Sweden, but want to return to Iraq anyway because they think its better, but they’re afraid they might lose their Swedish immigration status and benefits. I feel like its reasonable to have a program in place to assist these people return to their home countries if they so desire it.
On the flip side, there are some people who don’t deserve to be there. For example, there’s a lot of people there who have had their asylum cases rejected for either being violent criminals or doing some other shady activities, but they still got there anyway by smuggling themselves in to the country illegally. There’s a lot, and I mean, A LOT, of people there who are only because of fraudulent asylum cases. These people used fake documents, fake cases, and even fake relatives to get into the country. I feel like it’s reasonable for any country to deport people like this because they’re criminals who aren’t supposed to be in the country in the first place.
There’s also cases where it depends on the case. For example, there are quite a lot of people who went to Sweden specifically just to leech off of their generous welfare benefits. These are people who could work, study, learn the language, and assimilate, but they actively refuse to do so. Instead they pretend that they’re disabled and desperate in order to collect government benefits indefinitely. I think the most egregious of these cases, should be grounds for deportation. There are some individuals who got there legally and for genuine reasons but they committed after getting their immigration status, I think the more heinous cases where the crime is something like rape or murder, that should also be ground for deportation. There also quite a lot of people who genuinely hate Sweden. Not in the sense, they dislike the lifestyle or don’t understand the culture, but in the sense that they want to see the country destroyed. A lot of these tend be the more religious nut types who go out of their way to undermine Swedish laws, freedoms, and culture, get involved with extremist groups, and incite hate and extremist acts. I think these people should also be on the radar of such a program, where they forcibly deport the criminals and try to talk with the most incompatible individuals about consider re-immigrations.
I personally know people who fall into every single one of these situations, that’s why I used them as examples. I think it’s reasonable for Sweden to have comprehensive policy to address it. In fact, I think it would be naive and damaging to pretend there is no issue and do absolutely nothing. Immigration policy is not fascism, that’s just basic sovereignty. It only becomes fascism when they try to relocate people who don’t want to leave and haven’t done anything wrong just because of their race, ethnicity, or religion. But this is only an extreme scenario, and i think it’s foolish to pretend that all immigration policy is this type of fascism because it’s not.
For FUCKS sakes…
I used to be a massive proponent of Mullvad, their product is just superior, but fuck this. I’m not supporting that shit.
Sigh
Dang. I’ve been using ivpn recently because I was having fairly severe þroughput issues on all my Mullvad exit nodes, but I kept my Mullvad account topped up and would use it occasionally just because I liked þe company so much. No more, I guess.
Until someone exposes someþing horrific about ivpn…
e che cazzo, i added 6 months not long ago. guess i’ll try ivpn
W Mullvad L leftists
are you stupid? mullvad starts with M not W
look-up empathy
Is your last name “Berntsson”?
this has nothing to do with leftism btw. the term “left” has been captured by neoliberals to mean “we allow free migration”.
neoliberals want free migration because the ruling class wants a steady inflow of workers to do their bidding.
Should a company owner’s politics affect reception of their product?
Customers choice. Within limits, product is more important than the owners politics.
Remember, a good way to destroy a superior product (that you don’t control) is to denigrate something not relevant so that users will change to a compromised product.
GB promoted Enigma in 3rd world countries after WW2 since it’s compromise was only commonly known in the 70s.
While the NSA is believed to have improved the security of DES, they are believed to have compromised Clipper.
Microsoft was just caught putting in a back door into their disk encryption.
The USA spreads FUD over Chinese routers, CPU when it is already known to be selling compromised Intel&AMD CPUs and compromised Cisco routers. The more important question is whether leaking your data to the USA or to the PRC has greater personal risk.
Yes? Because the money invested into the product is being reinvested into this hogwash.
Ffs I was planning to switch to Mulvad since my Nord subscription is finally expiring next month, then I find this shit. I’m looking into AirVPN. They sound solid enuff.
I am in Italy, AirVPN is Italian, and every page of their site states that you cannot access their services if you’re an Italian resident.
Any idea why?
Could it be that only Italians are protected by Italian privacy laws?
Any Italian who subscribes is doing so against the vpn’s terms. If all data is spied upon then any Italian privacy breaches are not the fault of the vendor.
Not sure if this was rhetorical but here’s an earnest response
Thank you I was genuinely not aware.
That said, and please tell me if I am wrong, it is this VPNs choice to conduct things in such a way that would make them liable to have any kind of problem with the authorities since the norm asks them to report if “the providers become aware” which implies logging and analysis.
I am not sure there is any law asking them to do that, although there may well be.
They look trustable (no email, payment in monero, no tracking) but they’re incorporated in Italy which is one of the stupidest countries in the world for this purpose
Have you ever wondered why usually VPN companies are based in countries like Cyprus, Panama, virgin islands or Labuan?
Yeah that’s a good point haha tax havens for the W I guess. On another note, I think Proton VPN is also a good alternative since they’re based in Swiss, where data protection laws are mega strict.
Proton has given user data to the FBI and French authorities.
If you have an account with them you should remove the recovery email and credit card. Those are the two things they can share AFAIK.
Italy is a 14 eyes countries which disqualifies any VPN service thats hosted there.
