alt Hacker NewsI'm really sad about it but I'm not going to renew Mullvad once the 6 months I already payed for are up.
I'm fine supporting companies that have people with poliical views I initially interested in Mullvad for political reasons and one of the founders giving a significant amount of money to a political group that wants to restrict the rights of other people is too much for me.
Not everyone is cynical. Some of us have actual values we act on.
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I am in a similar situation and I am out from this point as well. Mullvad does a lot of wonderful work, but I think debating whether Örebropartiet's positions are reasonable or not misses the point. Head over to Allard's Twitter feed [1], as he has not yet published a coherent manifesto anywhere from what I can tell. If you do not read Swedish, get some sort of translation tool going. Keep in mind, this is how he wants to appear to the world.
[1]: https://xcancel.com/markus_allard
Sure, you find the odd reasonably put politic position. But, mostly, it is memes. Screaming. Ranting. Insults. Calling the head of the Swedish police a "crying bitch". Retweets of posts from who are not even shy in terms of being bigots and racists. The man is a toxic toad and I would rather have seen him paid to shut up than anything else. Yes, we need diverse viewpoints to be heard and we should be respectful and careful to shut them down. But, Allard is not this person and he is just ruining public discourse even further and waging an insane culture war (in my mum's constituency at that). Call me old-fashioned, but I expect representatives to at least try to strive towards holding morals and behaviour above the mean of society.
I have read Mullvad's blog post, but not Berntsson' yet (it is bloody long and I am at work, but skimming it, I saw nothing arguing why "public discourse arson" is warranted and just "something needs to be done, this is something"), so maybe I am missing some context. But if the answer to your question is "Bank-roll Allard", maybe it is time to take a step back and ask yourself what on Earth your question was in the first place? Because it seems to me like you are playing with fire and risk burning all that we hold dear to the ground. Do your views not have a Johan Norberg-like [2] character (something very rare, a Swedish Libertarian that has contributed to public discourse for over twenty years) that you can support instead? Or is the direction you want to see only professed by people that behave very close to what I would describe as the very worst our species have to offer?
Its worth considering that this is a left wing populist party that doesn’t like immigration, and what was actually said (the major controversy) is that even if you are born in Sweden, if you commit crimes and do not make any effort to be Swedish: you probably shouldn’t be here.
How this is represented by people is different than that, and its hard for people who don’t speak Swedish to listen to the original sources, but be assured that in Sweden there is an actual party founded by Nazi sympathisers and it is the second most voted for party.
I get not wanting to support someone you think has immoral views, but check the facts first before blacklisting a company that is filled with people trying to push for a more open, private yet transparent internet.