Swedish VPN vendor Mullvad is facing a backlash from some customers after co-founder Daniel Berntsson personally donated SEK 5 million (£385,000, $519,000) to the controversial populist Örebropartiet, which is running in Sweden’s national elections for the first time.
Berntsson has this week published a blog post explaining the donation, alongside posts titled “Immigration,” “Political individualism,” and “Moral individualism.” Before that, he had not posted since 2019.
The flurry of posts follows weeks of customer criticism over the donation – for example, Finnish blog Moonwriting’s post “I’m done with Mullvad.” Another blog, Unutterable, is more direct: “Mullvad funding the far-right and the problem with tech company ownership.” The Hacker News discussion thread about the donations has reached a remarkable 1,784 comments so far.
Mullvad was co-founded and is still jointly owned and run by two CEOs, Berntsson and Fredrik Strömberg. Its name, as reflected in the company’s logo, is Swedish for “mole.” It also offers the Mullvad Browser, a privacy-enhanced fork of Firefox ESR co-developed with the Tor Project. Swedish socialist newspaper Flamman (“The Flame”) revealed the donation in its story “High-profile techie gives millions to the Örebro Party.”
In a post on X, the company said it was devoted to freedom of speech and tolerance, saying: “It should be obvious that Daniel’s private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad’s values or mission, in the same way that someone’s opinions on animal rights, taxes or public healthcare policy isn’t.”
Is that guy funding the far-left in the room with you right now? He seems to play an important roll for you.
How is the Mullvad guy far right? I thought the Örebro Party was a Marxist party focused on expanding socialized services, like expanding healthcare, reducing costs for public transport, shortening the work week while keeping full pay, etc.
For whom exactly? That’s your answer. The OG Nazis said that kind of thing too.
The Nazis were bad because they did the holocaust and tried to conquer Europe, not because they expanded the safety net and gave their citizens healthcare.
I’m just asking how they’re considered right wing.
They are a confusing mix or far left and far right ideas and are a person cult around Allard that came from the left but has bridged the horse shoe and gone xenophobic totalitarian nationalist.
Its not far left to want nice things for your favoured in-group. That’s right.
Like, he has his own bodyguards or security agency?
(My understanding is it’s a local political party that operates in one town.)
Very few politicians here have that. No idea if he does, but it doesn’t seem likely.
They are a local political party operating out of the town Örebro, they have some regional seats in the region that’s also called Örebro.
Local and regional politics is still important though. Having fascists diddle around with that is bad news.