It also has a comment from the other founder: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48696800
I remain a happy Mullvad user.
And there is more to life than politics, even though I feel it's hard to understand in the current hysterical climate of social media echo chambers and US politics. It is honestly terrifying to live in a world where most hope everyone else would conform and have the exact same perspective of the world as them, else they get accused of wrongthink.
A free and open society does not mean that law and order cannot exist. Nor does it mean that immigration laws cannot be created or enforced.
I do not consider that as a requirement free society. While representational democracies give governance to a small amount of people compared to the overall populace theoretical you could have a society where everyone was on equal footing and all contributed to decisions being made.
However, support for migration is not a left or right issue. Accepting refugees might be (and I fully support that), but non-refugee immigration (the vast majority of it) is not an unalloyed good.
Immigration has a number of negative effects, on housing, employment and wages, inequalities, social cohesion, political direction.
Being a radical leftist and against immigration is not contradictory.
Seems very sensible.
Whether or not they are actually capable or even plan do any of that it's a different matter. Typically, they only end up being a coverup for political extremism. In then other cases they fumble and somehow mess up the situation even more.
Twitch and Discord meanwhile feel remarkably unaffected compared to their counterparts.
VPNs in the aftermath of FireSheep[1] before we got proper HTTPS, but it's not likely to be the ban or censorship circumvention tool we think they are.
In general though, I’m more likely to trust people who have strong opinions, especially if they’re dissenting opinions.
We often immolate people for not being perfect enough while letting people like Trump capture huge parts of their respective market.
Your ire isn’t useful.
I believe that this is handwringing from people who want to take Mullvad down.
2) My parents weren't alive
3) my grandparents weren't alive.
4) he was running a country, not a company thats entire purpose was to protect peoples privacy
5) had people taken privacy seriously, there would be a lot less dead people in Europe, famously the dutch kept meticulous records of their populations which is part of why the Nazi's were so effective.
I am one of the imposter people you reference.
That said, I don't actually see much to corroborate what you're saying either, they don't seem to be implying use of AI and mass surveillance.
I think you've decided something you don't like is bad and now are trying to tie other things you don't like to it?
If you give money to Mullvad you're giving a percentage of it through to Örebro. That's why people are boycotting Mullvad.
No I don't think it's a honeypot, unless it's a total lie to begin with. If it's true, it's an unforced error by Mullvad. There are other VPNs you can use that allow port forwarding.
> I think you've decided something you don't like is bad and now are trying to tie other things you don't like to it?
This is against guidelines.
Can you show me where you got the idea of mass surveillance and AI (since you're claiming you didn't make it up)
My dude, he wants to expel all non-Swedes from Sweden.
It's an extreme position.
Yet it's also now two degrees moved from the founder of Mullvad; who has not expressed these opinions nor issued direct support for them specifically, nor do they imply all non-Swedes as you imply.
I'm not sure how you go from "Mullvad founder gave money to a party" to "that party leader said something extreme about criminals and welfare-abuse" to "the mullvad founder wants all non-Swedes deported".
What is a "natural connection to Sweden"?
"Values" get thrown around a lot, but equality of women and acceptance of homosexuality is a big deal to Swedes, so if you shun those things then I wouldn't expect acceptance.
That quote is his answer to a question about people born here who commit crimes and live long-term on welfare; whether they can also be made to leave. It's not a freestanding statement about everyone born in Sweden to immigrant parents.
And the passage continues past where your excerpt stops:
"They have not become Swedes. It says Sweden in the passport, but they haven't been interested in becoming part of Sweden. That's a qualitative difference." "Have not become" only works if becoming is possible. So the criterion he's stating is failed assimilation, not ancestry; and the write-ups of the same interview describe his programme the same way: remigration for criminals and the long-term welfare-dependent.
To be fair: that's still a subjective judgement about people's inner attitudes, which I've said elsewhere in this thread is arbitrary and I'd oppose. He also says he's prepared to "walk over corpses" on this, so I'm not selling him as a moderate. Extreme, yes. Ancestry-based, no. Those are different accusations, and only one of them survives contact with sources.
Podcast (Swedish): https://aljosja.substack.com/p/satter-orebropartiet-sverige-...
I feel like people are looking for a reason to be outraged and not the shape of the actual situation. It makes me skittish.
But, born here? Or not born here?
Anyhow, "criminals" is a way too vague concept for expelling someone from a country, especially when your party could come to power and criminalize anything you want.
And, Show me the man and I'll show you the crime: most people commit something illegal relatively frequently, sometimes without even realizing that it could be (e.g. copyright violations, libel, slight violations of obscure little-known laws...).
They'll typically never face consequences for that; but if you target them, or if it becomes more interesting for law enforcement to find any violation of the law on the part of someone, more often than not something will be found.
I empathise with the point you're making, and I suspect we agree on a lot more than you expect, but there is a serious issue with crime as it is currently defined.
If the party comes to power and the law they'll actually enact says "If you violated any law you can be expelled", it would make anyone easily expellable.
Selective enforcement of those you find disagreeable is a way of bullying people with impunity.
That said, I'm curious on how you would solve the issue that Sweden is faced with. It is a very outsized, pronounced, issue and the legal system in Sweden is not equipped to deal with it.
The Swedish legal system prioritises rehabilitation, but the scale of the problem and the reoffending rate being what it is for serious crimes of foreign born persons does need to be answered somehow.
Ignoring it will make the problem worse, people will keep reaching further right.
Do search for the causes and strive to solve them, I doubt that the only possible solution (if it were a solution) is mass deportations.
Insufficient integration efforts could well be at the root of a lot of the immigrant crime problems; I agree with striving to integrate immigrants, to the point that I agree to a lot of what I see at https://web.archive.org/web/20200120174720/http://www.orebro... (2020, not on their site anymore).
I think you should demand committed acceptance of some core values to new immigrants, and I can agree with expulsion after serious enough violations of those.
And I'm not a fan of having as much immigration as possible.
How would you feel if you hadn't eaten breakfast today?
A better question might be:
A) How does it feel to have the president of the galactic federation of planets outlaw cybernetic implants because they are used to harvest cloned Mycinian DNA illegally - despite such a law preventing the commercial use of home based medical technology.
or
B) How did it feel to be Plato, during the ostraca.
--
My point is: I know that the environment my great-granfather lived in is quite literally unknowable to me, despite a living person being able to talk to me about his experiences - it was also barely knowable for him.. "you had to be there".
The same way trying to explain to someone about our upbringing (no cell phones, paper maps, you had to stick to your arrangements because once out of the home there was no communication possible) is very difficult, imagine not having cars, air travel, all news being via the paper (which not everyone purchased) and everyone you know is a labourer.
In that context, with a global political landscape, and a local-first community of folks who could only articulate ideas amongst themselves... Man, I have no fucking clue how I would feel. Just like they'd have no clue about the concept of Espresso House or what would be possible in 2026.
History is really really easy in hindsight. If I have conservative opinions of any sort it's because I prefer to choose options personally that leave us with more choices later.
If this level ethnic replacement happens to be wrong, then it's already too late to do anything about it. That's just true, 15% of a country is already here and there's nothing anyone can do about this humanely.
Asking me how I'd feel if I was born 100 years ago is extremely uncompelling, because I could ask you how my family from then would think about things are today and I can guarantee that they're not going to agree with your perspective on the right approach.
Of course his ire is useful. You just don’t want it to be.
... While, Elon Musk still owns everything and in my opinion he's worse.
It's also very easy to sympathise with Mullvads co-founder here, so you help make the conditions for the next 2016 "surprise, an actual Fascist gains power!" election, which is what's happening in Sweden right now as SD (founded by dyed in the wool actual Nazi's) has become the second largest party in Sweden.
But yeah, go off king! You got this, show them who's boss! We'll all be better for it! (/s)
No fucking thanks. Not an inch. Here’s a politically savvy idea: maybe somebody should make an immigration-skeptical party that’s not frothing at the mouth about ethnic cleansing.
Also, it’s just one VPN out of hundreds. The free internet will somehow survive, I’m sure.
It's enough to consider that there's something malicious going on.
But I guess we should use one of the VPN providers that aren't pushing for systems transparency[0] and are dubiously everywhere across all of youtube advertising despite that being provably the place where the scummiest of companies go.[1].
[0]: https://mullvad.net/media/system-transparency-rev5.pdf
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVDQEoe6ZWY & https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3t1d1zzu54
Not wanting unfettered and uncontrolled migration (when it has proven to massively increase crime - which was the context) is not racism, that's stupid.
If 15% of the population of Japan had moved from the UK in the last 10 years and committed a disproportionate amount of crime, it would cause racism, but talking about it as a problem that needs to be solved is not itself racism.
Sorry, but we’re all in this together. Anyone who disagrees won’t get a cent from me.
Also:
> unfettered and uncontrolled migration
Bullshit, immigration is already massively down: https://archive.ph/20260720101017/https://www.economist.com/...
Same lie far-right parties around the world use to enact their sick agendas.
Mullvads mission is about privacy and against mass surveillance. That mission has nothing to do with their co-CEOs personal stance on immigration. I don't necessarily see the conflict of interest that the blog talks about?
It is really not difficult to draw this line to spot contradiction between co-CEO's personal stance and the company's mission.
are you sure you don't just hate the victims of all that crime?
That doesn't apply to countries with a working personal-id system.
There it's just a matter of cancelling the banking account.
Some sieving at the borders, airports, harbors.
Maybe asking around the neighbours, former work where that sucker has gone.
Grabbing, and expedite. And that's it.
Bye, bye!
I checked the official source, which should be considered the authoritative source imo?
When someone shows you who they are, believe them.
You just said the explanation.
Being this sensitive to company leadership political activity is going to exhaust a person and time would be better spent being careful to buy products with minimal value added from authoritarian nations with a history of gross human rights issues.
Lots of counties don't want immigration, especially after they let a large group in and deal with integration challenges. The CCP forcefully places ethnic Han into minority homes to function as de facto informants. The Russians broke up Finnish/Ukrainian families en masse, moving them to the other end of Russia to minimize the likelihood of dissent in occupied areas.
There are a lot worse ideas at play in the world than some of the more extreme suggestions that this very infant-sized Swedish party flirt with. On a scale of 1-10 heinousness, barely registers on the global stage.
My thinking goes more like this:
This product I bought from this nation... Does that Nation tend to value human rights, freedom of expression and liberal values? Sweden... Check.
I can buy Swedish products all day. They make nice jets and mobile artillery that push back on the really bad ideas. One CEO's affiliation with an anti immigration populist party which honestly doesn't seem that serious... They've got some Marxist ideas in there. I really doubt these guys go much of anywhere in their current form. It's a capitalist society. Some of their ideas will stick but the party is immature. I wouldn't worry so much.
If so, I'd be keen to see clear evidence of that.
Ok, in Australia they can probably be called Murdoch
Progressive people, being more keen on altruism, tend to think that the good reasons immigrants have to migrate should overshadow the problems that immigration can cause.
And sometimes there's maybe also a view that a strongly multi-ethnic society is something to aspire for, because of the increased understanding of different people and hopefully a reduction of racism that it can lead to.
Progressives tend to think that everyone should be as tolerant as them, and that can lead to only looking into the problems, and finding solutions, up to a degree.
I saw that in the shift from arguing for integration to arguing for tolerance and a multi-cultural society, for example, where inadeguate integration efforts faiiled.
---
On the other hand, right wing/conservative parties often enact policies that compound the immigration problems, rather than improving them.
In part that's due to a preference for securitarian policies, rather than looking for the root causes.
And in part that's because immigration problems most often lead to increased votes for them, so it's in their interest to not actually solve them.
All this, in the end, can create a space for parties standing for drastic solutions such as mass deportations; however immoral, dangerous for everyone and hard to realize they may be.
---
The way forward, in my opinion, should be for progressive parties to stop dismissing the problems that immigration can lead to, and to do their utmost to improve them all, rather than pretending for everyone to be as tolerant as them.
The actual middle/long term solution would probably be ensuring that the new potential immigrants are willing to integrate to a sufficient degree, and most of all to look into what pushes them to migrate in the first place, and work for improving the causes of that.
The latter can seem utopic, but it's better than the alternatives, in my opinion.
Ok, that wasn't so brief xD
> sympathetic to anti immigration sentiments
Immigration isn't just sunshine and roses, and the negatives are coming to light. Especially when we're allowing Sharia-espousing people, exposing people who, by definition, can't integrate with our own values: FGM, abusing women, and child brides are not acceptable to me.I used to think that people in tech would have the brain to react in a sensible way, anyhow.
And I don't see how you could think that someone "by definition, can't integrate with our own values" without resorting to racism.
What's left is an audience devoted to power, money, and being the boot that stamps on a human face.
It is also interesting how they may get their seat.
Örebropartiet is a local party to Örebro, but because they are getting a lot of votes in the local district election they may end up in a seat in the Riksdag, which is highly unusual.
Or because they're getting a lot of money through Mullvad subscriptions
Ethnonationalism: Defined by shared ancestry, lineage, and cultural heritage. Membership is exclusive and inherited by birth, focusing on preserving a specific ethnic identity.
Civic Nationalism: Defined by shared political principles, values, and laws. Membership is inclusive and open to anyone who adheres to the state's legal framework, regardless of background.
Does the party call for remigration or a lower status for immigrants who have committed no crimes, found jobs and are not a disproportionate drain on the welfare state? To be ethnonationist, I believe they must call for that on the basis of us vs them. Perhaps someone can provide evidence of this. I haven't seen any. Seems like they are very upset about crime and welfare drain. Also they have a bunch other non immigration related positions that some might label as extreme.
I don't see any mention of crimes, having jobs or "being a disproportionate drain" (however you define that).
My understanding is that the discussion can be found around this timestamp link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4goynP4mHYI&t=1h18m43s
According to the machine translation, Allard explicitly frames his argument around cultural assimilation, economic contribution, and behavior rather than biological ethnicity or skin color alone.
In public statements, he has routinely asserted that an individual's racial background or skin color is irrelevant to his politics.
Look, I'm not some Allard supporter. Don't know the guy, not even Swedish. Easily found some stuff on their platform which I quickly disagree with. I really doubt he's literally out there just calling for mass deportation of folks based on ethnicity. That is actual ethnonationism. Swedish people are from a nice free society and are accustomed to low crime and low problems. They've got this 2nd generation migrant issue that lots of Europe is dealing with.
The definition of ethnonationist is being used so flipantly throughout this thread.
Do your really think this guy is just standing up saying 'remigrate all dark skinned folks who got here recently'?
Even if that were his true political goals, it would be pretty self defeating to just charge onto the stage going full Nazi. He wouldn't have this much movement.
> I really doubt he's literally out there just calling for mass deportation of folks based on ethnicity. That is actual ethnonationism. Swedish people are from a nice free society
If you meant that they wouldn't support racist policies, a party with neo-nazi roots is currently the second largest one; calling for mass deportation based on ethnicity might not be that unpopular.
Actually, the Swedish Democrats themselves in 2003 adopted “the idea of "open Swedishness”, meaning that Swedish identity is not biologically exclusive and that assimilation is – theoretically – possible”.
And their ideas about immigration don't seem very different to those of Örebro, at a quick glance.
The SD are described in the intersting scholarly article at https://direct.mit.edu/euso/article/21/4/583/127125/Frames-o... as ethno-nationalists.
Sadly no, in 2026 going full Nazi genocidal maniac mass murderer in waiting seems to be broadly acceptable for a politician, in the next few years we can expect the "in waiting" part will be dropped somewhere.
I know I don't.
Which wiki calls as debunked, and 'conspiracy theory'. Fkn rturds!
The party in question is a small local government party looking to primary get seats in their local government, but with aspiration to get into national politics under a special rule that provide a single seat (1 out of 349) in parliament if the party get enough votes in a local election. The politician in question has made some comments about national immigration policy during debates, which local government has no power over, and which is what the label ethnonationalist is exclusively based on. Last election they got 7 700 votes, and they would need around 20 000 votes to get that one parliament seat.
The specific quote in question has a bunch of context. The background was a parliamentary proposition that suggest that immigrants that are on subsidy programs should be required to do some social work as part of the integration process. The opposition disagreed, arguing that this would enable the government to exploit immigrants as free labor, and that is when this politician commented that if they want subsidy but refuse to work then they should return back to their home country (often translated as deported, which is not completely wrong translation but lacks context).
The discussion around deportation from Sweden is also very different from the political discussion in US. Sweden has been deporting people for about 100 years if a person lacks permission to stay in the country, and there is no party that is advocating to stop this. What is debated is the definition used in the exception for unsafe home country, and a bit about what specific circumstances a permission to stay in the country can be withdrawn. Except for the above mentioned parliamentary proposition, I do not know of any political statements that Örebro party or their leader has said on those issues.
Honestly you’ve summed up 90% of social media outrage.
If the opposition parties disagreed, why did this politician assume that unemployed people "refuse to work"? like what type of argument that is? He sounds like an ignorant populist repeating sound bites to spread hatred honestly. Or maybe he thinks of them as pawns with no agency, and not people.