Could someone fully explain the mullvad controversy. From my knowledge so far it seems like the cofounder donated to an alt right party and it’s probably a bad sign for the company. Anything I’m missing?
Daniel is one of the founders of Mullvad and part owner. He took a big chunk of change from his private wealth and donated it to a horseshoe loonie party. Horseshoe because they try to marry ideas from the extreme left to immigrant hateful ideas from the extreme right. Loonie is self explanatory. His donation made it possible for that party to run a nationwide campaign.
Mullvad users who got mad simplified this to Mullvad fees finance a Nazi party directly. Which isn’t true. How much of this donation truly came from VPN fees is also a matter of debate. They aren’t strictly Nazis, more xenophobic communists. But assholes are still assholes and people choose labels differently. There is a lot of kneejerk reacting going on.
The company seems to want to ride it out. They correctly point to this being a decision by a private citizen who may exercise his free speech by donating to the loonie party. But they either don’t recognize the PR hell of being guilty by association as a company or they know the subscription drain isn’t as bad as the online outrage makes it look like. They publicly say this is all about free speech, which is their DNA, yada yada yada.
Mullvad users who got mad simplified this to Mullvad fees finance a Nazi party directly.
You are making this up.
Those of us mad understand how the money changes hands.
It is mathematically correct to say that a portion of the energy I may contribute to Mullvad will end up financing fascism.
This isn’t only about the political donations. That’s a coowner/cofounder we are talking about. That’s significant. If some rank and file schmuck donated to nazis in his spare time and not a cofounder, it would be less bad. Still bad, but less damaging.
This cofounder has outsized infuence on how the culture of Mullvad is shaping up.
Do I want to support that when there are better, more private, VPN companies without the nazi cofounders? For example NymVPN mixnet.
There is no good reason to prefer Mullvad.
It’d be a different story is we only had two VPN companies and both had nazi founders. Then we’d have to weigh privacy vs nazism. But that’s not our situation right now.
One of the co-founders/co-ceo’s almost single handedly funded a racist political party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Örebro_Party that wants Sweden to manufacture weapons.
The other co-founder/co-ceo stated he did not agree with it, but also doesn’t really care because ‘free speech’
Mullvad stated that users who were not happy could apply for refunds. some have, some haven’t.
Lemmy, and other social media platforms have multiple threads about this, including very obviously biased threads designed to mislead people into believing it was the company who made the donation, or that there is only one ceo.
Paying mullvad does equal funding that political party.
The Örebro Party (Swedish: Örebropartiet, ÖP or ÖrP) is a political party in Sweden. The party was initially only a local party in Örebro, Sweden. Markus Allard is the party leader. According to Allard the party cannot be placed anywhere on the traditional left-right spectrum. The party has been variously characterised as left-wing and right-wing, as well as populist, nationalist and conservative.
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,[3] ending taxpayer funding of what it sees as wasteful sculptures, monuments and art and introducing free dental care.[4][5] 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.[6][7]
Don’t see anything particularly racist. And since when domestic weapons manufacture is the problem?
“Remigration” is ethnic displacement. There is most definitely something racist about that. It’s up there with some of the most heinous crimes against humanity you can commit.
I’m sure you can hand select passages about hitler that also suit your stance while making him seem like kermit the frog.
Since when are weapons not a problem?
That’s basically it although I don’t think it’s technically alt-right. More specifically, he donated half a million USD to the Örebro Party
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.
Not alt-right, just fascist?
