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Posted by Risse 9 hours ago

The CEO of Mullvad is the main financer of the Swedish Örebro party(det.social)
335 points | 768 commentspage 3
mortarion 3 days ago|
Örebropartiet is not a extremist far-right party. All their policies is extreme far-left except immigration.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party

ortusdux 3 days ago||
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
josefritzishere 3 days ago|||
Seems more complicated than that, in reading the wiki.
gpm 3 days ago|||
This sounds very much far right and not left at all to me

> Markus Allard takes inspiration from marxist ideology[32] and unites the "productive" classes of society against the "Transferiat", with the "Transferiat" being a term coined by Allard to describe the classes of society that lives off of transfers that are a net negative for society such as those who, despite having an ability to work, live off of social welfare benefits, as well as those who work "made-up services"[33] that the party deems serve no societal function, such as bureaucrats, consultants, public sector communications specialists, strategists and HR-specialists.

It's practically a copy and paste of the ideology behind "doge".

irthomasthomas 3 days ago|||
Sounds like a branch of the Technocracy movement which Musks grandfather helped found.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_N._Haldeman

"The technocracy movement proposed replacing partisan politicians and business people with scientists and engineers who had the technical expertise to manage the economy"

jauntywundrkind 3 days ago||
Whoa whoa whoa. I don't think it's at all fair trying to throw Technocracy under the bus. The guilt by association doesn't look great! But Technocracy was interesting. It had some hopes & values, and it wanted people thinking and working materially, scientifically, having a perception of the world better than just money. It had some real neat idea. Wild & absurd? Yes that too. But I don't enjoy the casual drive by shoot down!
irthomasthomas 3 days ago||
Weird, I didn't think I was throwing technocracy under the bus. What makes you say that?
iamnothere 3 days ago||||
This is just a rephrasing of the lumpenproletariat, coupled with the professional-managerial class. You could also refer to the latter as a modern version of the lumpenbourgeoisie (although this term is applied rather broadly). It sounds more like pro-labor, pro-work, anti-lumpen Marxism. In no way “right-wing” unless you want to call North Korea “right-wing”, which is a very ultra-left thing to do (what orthodox Marxists call left deviationism).
ShinyLeftPad 3 days ago||||
By your logic USSR was far right.
gpm 3 days ago||
No, I'm fairly sure you could not find a quote like that about the USSR.
ShinyLeftPad 3 days ago|||
You would be wrong. The people you described were called "тунеядцы" in USSR. With a possible exception of bureaucrats who existed as a result of centralized government but were also called "a barrier for the working class" by Lenin etc.

I also highly doubt USSR would accommodate people who move in and don't bother to integrate into the culture and speak Russian. Ask people from entire countries where Moscow did Russification, and those people didn't even move in from outside they already lived there.

pigpop 3 days ago||||
The trial of Joseph Brodsky is a fascinating insight into the workings of the USSR https://www.nytimes.com/1972/10/01/archives/the-trial-of-jos...

They had strong opinions of what was deemed "socially useful" work and were not above abolishing those pursuits they deemed to be useless.

All able-bodied people were expected to work (in approved roles) and you would be provided a job if you couldn't find one but if you refused to work they would deem you a "social parasite" and prosecute you if you didn't reform your behavior.

Somehow, people seem to forget that Marxism is an ideology of workers.

jalapenoj 3 days ago||
>Somehow, people seem to forget that Marxism is an ideology of workers.

Not really, Marx and company were nobles, lawyers, etc. The ideology concerns provoking a civil war and taking over, workers rights is just the rhetoric to cause the revolution. The worker’s paradise never materializes because it’s not actually about that.

pigpop 3 days ago|||
This is true but the ideology was packaged and sold as a movement for the working class. My observation had more to do with the modern interpretation of it as somehow being a license to not work, which appears comical when compared with how it was instituted.

Not all of the component parts of the ideology are necessarily false due to their introduction and popularization by Marx. Personally, I find his writings obtuse and his beliefs abhorrent. There is, however, merit in the idea that the state should benefit its people, a large percentage of which are the productive working class, but it shouldn't be ruled by the working class. The state is its people and their culture, it shouldn't oppose their interests or subjugate and exploit them for the advancement of ideals alien to them.

stogot 2 days ago|||
Whoever downvotd you is unaware that the USSR tried a seven day work week. It was not about workers.
xanthor 1 hour ago||
From "An Evaluation of the Program for Reducing the Workweek in the USSR"

> There is considerable evidence that the reduction in hours of work is a basic goal and commitment of the Communist movement and the Soviet state.

https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP64B00346R0001002...

Saline9515 3 days ago||||
This is actually very far left, just not the current wealthy-urban-lgbtq far left. USSR marxists and Maoists held the same views, where the individual's main function was to work and refusal to work or low productivity required either reformation (aka often, Gulag) or hunger.

"Those how do not work, do not eat" - Mao

Interestingly, psychoanalysis in the USSR was aimed at helping the patient to go back to work, for instance.

mortarion 3 days ago|||
Marxism, communism and socialism are all extreme far-left ideologies.

Being anti-immigration doesn't automatically swing the party to the right. As written on Wikipedia, "left-conservative" is probably the best label.

The Swedish far-left loves to, for instance, brand the governing party in Denmark as far-right, but they are actually also left-conservative.

It is possible (shocker) to be liberal and progressive, whilst also being pro-assimilation, pro-deportation, anti-immigration.

gpm 3 days ago|||
> Marxism, communism and socialism are all extreme far-left ideologies.

Yes, but the behavior in that quote, cutting social services, is none of the above. Using language associated with far left movements while promoting far right policies leaves you as a far right party.

> Being anti-immigration doesn't automatically swing the party to the right

Literally nothing in the quote I quoted is about immigration (though they hit that checkbox as well and it absolutely does swing you to the right).

ShinyLeftPad 3 days ago||
> cutting social services

By providing free healthcare and dental care or at least reducing out of pocket costs?

creaturemachine 3 days ago||||
National Socialism in a nutshell.
rationalist 3 days ago|||
In the U.S., before Trump was elected, immigration control and deportating illegal immigrants were things that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama ("left" politicians) campaigned on.
rationalist 3 days ago||
I guess emotions/politics are more important than facts?

A very quick search yielded this short clip of Hillary Clinton:

https://youtube.com/shorts/Zsq32nNjNoE (no endorsement of overlays/etc intended, just the first result in the search)

whalesalad 3 days ago|||
Wild. I spent about 3 months living in Örebro while on contract with a company based there.
vrganj 3 days ago||
[flagged]
fsmedberg 3 days ago|||
Try radical populist left-economic-leaning nationalists
SauciestGNU 3 days ago||
Nazbols then? Equally bad.
Saline9515 3 days ago||||
There are many flavors of national socialism, in reality nazis should be called hitlerians because of this.
anonym29 3 days ago||||
>they're pro-ethnical cleansing of people already living there

source?

gpm 3 days ago||
From the wikipedia article linked above...

> In 2026 ÖP party leader Markus Allard sparked controversy on several occasions. In a debate hosted by Studio3 with Liberal member of parliament Martin Melin, Allard asked: "why won't the Liberals push for deporting 100 000 social welfare-Somalis?" and in the same debate said that "Sweden belongs to the Swedes. We have to make sure that we take care of our own damn people and we must deport these damn parasites who sit and live at our expense."

belorn 2 days ago|||
There aren't even 100 000 Somalians living in Sweden, so it would be quite hard to deport 100 000 social welfare-Somalis. People born in Somalia is the 7th largest group of immigrants, and makes up for the largest group if we only look at African nations.

The real number is around half, 67000.

Now if we assume social welfare-Somalis is a derogatory generalization of all kind of immigrates, including non-Somalis, then it is likely to be more than 100 000 immigrants that is on social welfare. They just won't all be Somalis, or even be the majority of them.

anonym29 3 days ago||||
"ethnic cleansing" is an emotionally charged term that conjures genocide in the popular imagination. It is not a good descriptive term for what can rightly be described as regressive or ultra-nationalistic migration policy.
microgpt 2 hours ago|||
Kicking out an ethnicity from your country is ethnic cleansing. There is no other way to put it.
10xDev 3 days ago||||
You are essentially calling for a civil war. Reason why Russia pushes these ideas under fake "patriot" accounts.
ShinyLeftPad 3 days ago|||
Would it be a civil war if it was a law passed by elected government?
axus 3 days ago||
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Confederat...
ShinyLeftPad 3 days ago||
Wasn't that secession? If part of Sweden decides to separate then we could discuss it in that context I guess.
anonym29 2 days ago||||
Are you trying to respond to a different comment? I'm not sure what this has to do with what I said. P.S. Fuck Putin, Slava Ukraini!
snackerblues 2 days ago|||
[flagged]
phs318u 2 days ago||
Leaving aside the fact you’re a white supremacist racist as some of your other flagged/dead comments make abundantly clear, I’ll nevertheless engage with your first point.

> A country has the right to determine who lives within it.

This is obviously true and every country has laws in place governing immigration and different laws in place governing handling of refugees. Given in most countries the ratio of immigrants to refugees is very high, what is it you’re objecting to? Countries can change their laws and often do, after a change in government. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with arguing for specific levels of immigration. But what you really shouldn’t do is retrospectively change the rules so that people who immigrated legally and settled in their adopted country are now threatened with expulsion.

It seems to me that in a lot of the discussion around immigration there is a subtext of “I don’t like how they behave/think/choose to live.” Which would be fine if people were honest about what they want - in which case, feel free to agitate for laws governing citizens’ behaviour. Don’t be a bad sport however if such laws don’t get passed. Another thing that apparently worries some people is criminality (as if that’s a function of race). By definition, something is criminal if it’s against the law. So enforce the law. Laws are typically not racist and criminals come in all flavours.

snackerblues 1 day ago||
It's about keeping people like you from letting people that can't maintain a competent society ruin our societies that have taken centuries or millennia to build.

> Laws are typically not racist

They explicitly are in every liberal shithole (Canada, UK) because the goal isn't equality it's letting brownoids shit up the place because you people are culturally suicidal.

The Muslims in the UK right now are not culturally compatible with the UK. They need to leave, they do not belong.

teh64 3 days ago||||
This is the definition from wikipedia: "Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous."

How does what Allard said not fit this definition?

constantius 2 days ago|||
I don't have a horse in this race, but all the quotes here were based on nationality, not on the characteristics listed in your quote: the party wants to deport illegal immigrants and immigrants who are not "economically integrated", because Swede is not an ethnicity.

Being left and anti-immigration is not an oxymoron.

Though I must say, based on some comments here, that people who are defending the party's ideology do seem to read it in terms of race...

teh64 2 days ago|||
Well Allard does not see nationality and ethnicity how you believe it. One line further in wikipedia: "In a podcast segment about immigration and deportations Allard stated his opinion and said that "They will also be forced to leave, even if they are born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedish.""

Also Swedes are an ethnicity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swedes

constantius 2 days ago||
Thanks for providing further context: as I mentioned, I was going off of the available quotes.

Given the party's other points', I'd still say he's not talking about Swedes as an ethnicity but as a nationality, similar to how other non-far-right, conservative parties express their beliefs. I checked the page, and that quote is provided without the context, and since Sweden does not have birthright citizenship, I don't know if he's talking about non-naturalised kids or naturalised people.

Further complications come from the fact that stripping "bad" immigrants of nationality is now an acceptable talking point for liberal parties the world over, and that position is very popular with people of all origins, not just the ethnic Europeans. I'd even argue it's less popular among ethnic Europeans than those of other ethbic backgrounds.

But I'll acknowledge that defending that party's position requires giving tons of benefit of the doubt...

type0 2 days ago||||
Swede is ethnicity in same way as Dane is ethnicity, Swedish and Danish is nationalities. Ethnic Sámi, while living on their ancestors land can be Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish or even Russian in nationality.
cherry_tree 2 days ago|||
No, a Somali who immigrated to Sweden is nationality wise Swedish and ethnicity wise Somali. The quote clearly says to expel Somalis and makes no distinction between ethnicity and nationality. Why do apologia for racism anyways? Weird stuff dude.
constantius 2 days ago||
> Why do apologia for racism anyways? Weird stuff dude.

Don't put words in my mouth.

> No, a Somali who immigrated to Sweden is nationality wise Swedish and ethnicity wise Somali

You seem to misunderstand the concepts of nationality and ethnicity, and how naturalisation operates.

cherry_tree 2 days ago||
Well you are doing apologia for racism. I’m not putting words in your mouth in calling out your behavior.

Please go ahead and define nationality and ethnicity. I’m happy to allow you to entirely define the terms to your ends and make an argument within those bounds. Please also tell us how the quoted statement calls out “naturalization” and “nationality” because it’s critical to you “not” doing racist apologia that both your definitions and the quoted statement are coherent.

constantius 2 days ago||
My friend.

If you ctrl f my username on this page, you'll find I'm arguing against racism and Islamophobia in another thread.

Let me make an assumption: you're an American liberal. Like many American liberals, you talk without knowing much about anything, with the purpose of feeling righteous, and appearing pure to others.

The world is more complex than what you read on the news.

I suggest you read "How immigration really works", by Hein De Haan, a book that explains why immigration is not a left or right issue. I also suggest you search definitions for these terms: nationality, ethnicity, naturalised immigrant.

cherry_tree 2 days ago||
My mistake. You definitely couldn’t be doing racist apologia if you’ve made statements against racism in the past. That’s convincing enough to me, an apparent American liberal!
anonym29 2 days ago|||
Is Allard advocating for removing everyone from immigrant backgrounds? I got the impression that Allard only wanted to remove criminals and net tax recipients, e.g. not removing law abiding, tax-paying, assimilated members of Swedish society, regardless of ethnicity/race/background.
gpm 3 days ago||||
Ethnic cleansing is an emotionally charged term, yes, because the crime against of humanity of deporting an entire population is absolutely horrific and a very close neighbour to genocide.

The proposed policy here is squarely what Rome Statute, Article 7 (1)(d) is intended to prevent. Sweden is a party to the treaty.

bvcp 2 days ago|||
did india ethnical cleanse out the british when they expelled even british indian born nationals?
vrganj 1 day ago||
Yes.
elzbardico 3 days ago|||
[flagged]
daneel_w 3 hours ago||
To the people using Mullvad I have two sincere and unpopular questions: do you actively scrutinize and examine the key people of every service and product you use, or is it just a reflexive change of footing whenever you happen upon news like this? Also, do you really switch, or is it just a heat of moment kind of thing and an opportunity to profess yourself?
mrhottakes 3 hours ago||
You can just say "I don't care if people have hateful politics". It's much easier.
anthonyrstevens 3 hours ago|||
No, that is not what they're saying nor advocating. My interpretation is: the world is full of people whose opinions I don't share, but what are the actual triggers that make you do something about your relationships with those people? Reflexive/reactive approaches are certainly one way, but could careful, proactive consideration result in better* outcomes for you? (better = whatever you take it to mean in this context)
mrhottakes 3 hours ago||
So just say "I don't care when people have hateful politics as long as they're useful to me"
daneel_w 3 hours ago|||
When you say "hateful politics" you have revealed that you act and react to all of this without bothering yourself with reading up on the policies of the small party the story relates to. You are being the very "reflexive" type of person I'm hinting at in my main comment - seeing an "important" chance to take a public stance, but the rest isn't important enough that you can be arsed to first inform yourself about any of it.
al_borland 3 hours ago|||
I use Mullvad, I have no intention of switching. The comment from the other CEO seemed perfectly reasonable, and the Wikipedia article about the political party also didn’t seem all that extreme. It mostly seemed like common sense stuff.
dgellow 2 hours ago||
What you call common sense is considered ethnic cleansing
nananana9 3 hours ago|||
> do you actively scrutinize and examine the key people of every service and product you use

No.

> is it just a reflexive change of footing whenever you happen upon news like this

Yes.

> do you really switch

Yes.

What is the implication here? That because I did not know that a percentage of the money I give a company went towards supporting a party whose I that I find disgusting, I should keep supporting them now that I do know?

bix6 3 hours ago|||
If alternatives exist some of us are willing to make changes to not support the worst of the worst when their behavior is revealed.

I used to like Musk, now I see Tesla and am disgusted. Maybe he was always like this but the personal line for me was the salutes. I’m sure many others have lines as well.

daneel_w 3 hours ago||
How do you know the political party of the story is "the worst of the worst"? You don't.
pesus 3 hours ago||
Have you considered that people are capable of reading and learning what the party supports? I assume most people here are capable of reading and can google things. Just spamming "you don't know what the party's policies are!" doesn't actually make it true, nor is it a defense for the party.
daneel_w 3 hours ago||
I don't need to consider their capacity for it. Of course they are capable of it, they just can't be bothered. Their echoing of "far-right", "worst of the worst" etc. sentiment of the original article shows it. Also, I don't vote for the party, nor do I give my money to Mullvad. I don't comment in order to defend them, I comment because I feel a need to call out the moralistic knee-jerk BS I see.
pesus 3 hours ago|||
[flagged]
daneel_w 3 hours ago||
There isn't any ethnic cleansing in their policies, neither direct nor indirect, and your veiled accusations are just disingenuous. You're not arguing in good faith at all.
pesus 3 hours ago||
Getting rid of everyone who is not white is in fact ethnic cleansing, whether you like it or not. This is what their "remigration" policy is, and what the party leader has said. This is all out in the open, and only takes a few minutes at most to read up on. It's very ironic that you keep insisting others haven't read up on the party when you clearly haven't.
daneel_w 2 hours ago||
You're willfully and in a most dishonest way misrepresenting their "re-migration" policy.
pesus 2 hours ago||
The party leader himself disagrees with you. Frantically spamming the thread with "you're a liar!!" doesn't actually change the facts.

> "They will also be forced to leave, even if they are born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedish."

Dylan16807 3 hours ago|||
Please stop insisting that other people didn't do any research into the party based on absolutely no evidence. It doesn't take long to look into the party.
daneel_w 2 hours ago||
You're right, it doesn't take long. That's the sad part. The evidence is in them echoing just one single cherry-picked policy, in a misrepresented way, while conveniently ignoring all their other far more numerous left-leaning policies.
Dylan16807 2 hours ago||
The good policies don't make up for the really bad one. In this context it doesn't matter if it's ""cherry-picked"".

Other than fuss about how to define left and right I haven't seen anything that qualifies as misrepresentation.

"Echoing" looks the same as "agreeeing" so that's hardly evidence of people failing to do enough research.

fzeroracer 3 hours ago|||
Generally speaking, if the mission of a company is privacy and then the actions of the c-suite or founders indicates that they are more than willing to compromise on that, then yes. Why shouldnt you scrutinize people whose product is not aligned with their goals?

And yes I do actively switch products. I left the Windows ecosystem for Linux and I will leave Mullvad for whatever else pops up. So it goes.

anthonyrstevens 3 hours ago||
[flagged]
distracted_boy 1 hour ago||
Go Mullvad!
mrtksn 9 hours ago||
previously discussed[flagged: 251 comments]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48687508
dang 3 hours ago||
Thanks, we'll merge that thread hither.
gpvos 8 hours ago|||
Including a statement from the other founder.
pluc 8 hours ago||
This one's gone too.
jubilee33 3 hours ago||
Mullvad has always been a bit suspect with regard to their settings or lack their of, however what are you trying to insinuate? That founders are not political? That one "wing" of some hypothetical bird is in some way disconnected from its mirror wing? Regardless making something such as a VPN is and has been commoditiezed in current year to such an extent that whatever may be your motives, you can only do good by encouraging the userbase to not pay for said services.
arjie 3 hours ago||
I wonder, if you model political positions as nations, whether trading benefits you all or whether autarky leads to long term relevance.
pu_pe 8 hours ago||
Any suggestions for a VPN service with similar security standards as Mullvad?
lompad 9 hours ago||
Damn. Well, if that gets confirmed I'm going to get my company off mullvad.
amarant 9 hours ago||
It's confirmed. And the party in question is quite extreme, at least by Swedish standards.
Gud 7 hours ago||||
[flagged]
yaris 8 hours ago|||
[flagged]
microgpt 7 hours ago|||
> IMHO 20% of voters can't be "extreme"

Was the NSDAP "extreme"? They got 43.9%

yaris 7 hours ago||
They got 43.9% in what Wikipedia marks as "semi-free yet questionable election". Also more correct question IMHO would be "was the NSDAP extreme in 1933?" and the answer is probably "no as much as by today's standards".
microgpt 5 hours ago|||
What you're actually asking is whether people knew they were extreme. But this makes your overall point circular: we can't say a party is extreme if the majority of people don't call it screens.
graemep 6 hours ago|||
They were definitely extreme by the standards of the time. Their aim was explicitly to completely revolutionise European politics, culture, religion.... everything. One comment I heard recent (on The Rest is History podcast, I think Tom Holland said it) they were the most radical movement in European history.

Their ideology implied at the very least getting rid of whole populations. They wanted to reset to an imagined ancient culture and rewrote history to justify it. Mostly imagined, anyway - Sparta was the one real example they looked to.

ahartmetz 3 hours ago||
They were extreme by the standards of the time, but the Overton window at the time did go further to the extremes, so they were considered less extreme than they would be today.
addandsubtract 6 hours ago||||
The AfD is a far-right extremist party in Germany with currently 28% projected support[0].

[0] https://dawum.de/Bundestag/

wongarsu 8 hours ago||
The wikipedia article about the party is pretty interesting [1]. "The party has also been described as both right-wing populist and left-wing populist as well as left-conservative"

The party was founded after the founder was thrown out of the Left party for liking a far-left extremist group on Facebook and not backing down from that. Since then the party has evolved to also include goals traditionally attributed to the right, like large scale remigration and a stricter immigration policy.

The party also seems inconsequentially small, even at the municipal and regional level. They have 0 seats at the national level

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party

Molitor5901 6 hours ago|
Aren't far-right parties opposed to government control and censorship? Ideally a provider should be politically neutral, but I'm wondering if it's preferable to have one that is opposed to government control and censorship.
pseudalopex 2 hours ago|
> Aren't far-right parties opposed to government control and censorship?

Not more consistently than other parties.

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