Posted by Risse 11 hours ago
What a co-owner does with his personal money in a local Swedish municipal election has zero impact on the code protecting my traffic.
Did a quick research - calling a party that campaigns for a 30-hour work week and socialist dental care 'far-right' just because they have a strict immigration policy shows how carelessly people throw labels around these days.
Of course, you have to trust the company on that.
> They're known to run everything in RAM, nothing gets stored. You pull the plug and everything is gone.
> Of course, you have to trust the company on that.
So nothing actually physically prevents them from logging your data, and this entire series of statements from you mean nothing because it still boils down to "you have to trust the company". A statement which is true for every VPN provider.
Furthermore, Mullvad doesn't even keep an email address or a credit card on file. You sign up with a random number and can pay with cash in an envelope. If a company doesn't know who you are, uses only RAM servers, open-sources their code, and successfully clears a police raid, it's no longer just a matter of blind trust
It's a shame, because real racist extremists/nazis benefit from this lumping together of legitimate concern about immigration and actual Nazis.
Being anti-immigration in a country that is shrinking is just stupid. Being pro-remigration is far-right and evil.
No, it's not.
The Örebro Party (Swedish: Örebropartiet, ÖP) is a local populist political party in Örebro, Sweden, led by Markus Allard. It holds seats in the Örebro municipal and regional assemblies, focusing on local populist policies such as reducing politicians' salaries, stricter migration, and free dental care.
Sweden has undergone a horrible transformation in the last several years where gang warfare and especially bombings have skyrocketed. Most of the new gang violence in the last several years is from migrants from North Africa and the Middle East, after Sweden implemented a generous immigration policy.
https://nct-cbnw.com/an-explosion-a-day-in-sweden-what-is-go...
There's nothing to indicate that this party is "far right" at all. It's a populist-based party but the stance on immigration is definitely linearly correlated to the violence that was brought in by immigration. Lowering politicians' salaries and free dental care doesn't sound very far right to me.
Your own link says,
"The defenders of Sweden’s once generous immigration policy will point out that, according to a report released in February 2024, 88% of the 14,000 people deemed to be active in criminal networks are Swedish citizens, and only 8% of these are dual citizens. 11% are non-citizens, and the remaining 1% was not known. An additional 48,000 people in Sweden were deemed to be linked to criminal networks, although not actively involved."
And it links to the report.
Did you think people wouldn't read it, or what? (Assuming you are not a bot, ofc. There seem to be a lot of them flooding every platform talking about this.)
The article you linked to also says:
"In an interview with SVT in January 2025, the Swedish Police’s Erik Lindblad said that they had seen an increase in what he termed “instrumental violence” where it is not people that are targeted but instead “fixed objects such as staircases and businesses”.
The reasons for the bombings are, in several cases, “suspected to be motivated by extortion against businesses or people linked to businesses and their families”, according to the Swedish authorities’ crisis information website. Mr. Lindblad also noted that the attacks can often be part of wider criminal conflicts, although these cases are often an exception to the rule, in their opinion.
Serious crime and the actors within those networks are often behind the attacks, according to Mr. Lindblad. “They use violence to get their way, irrespective of if it is revenge, or a battle over a drugs market, or extortion,” he said.
Thankfully, given that the explosions normally target doors, staircases, or businesses, the explosions do not always result in injuries and rarely kill people."
In any case, I do not actually care whether they are "far-right" or "far-left" or whateverthefuck. Left vs. Right is an infamously limited, binary horse-race way to talk about politics, one that groups disparate issues together arbitrarily. If you somehow convinced me they weren't fascist (though they are), I would not suddenly change my opinion of them just because the label changed.
The thing that actually matters is that they want to forcibly expel innocent people (including sending 2nd generation immigrants who were born and raised in Sweden to a country they have never lived in and have no connections to or familiarity with) from their homes en masse because it's convenient to blame them for all the nation's problems, based on zero evidence and maximum racism. There is no way to suggest something like this that is not monstrous.
Mullvad's mealy-mouthed defense of this is pathetic. There can be no tolerance for intolerance.
Where the Örebropartiet (Örebro Party) usually are called extremist is in questions regarding immigration. They are of the opinion that people that move to Sweden should not integrate but also assimilate, and quickly, find a job. For some people, this might sound extreme, but I would argue that more than half of the Swedish population (and its parties) nowadays share this view, similar to how Japanese people and society broadly want people that move their to assimilate.
And it's super racist there too, I can assure you. My father in law is Korean but lived in Japan his whole life. There's no way to describe what he experienced except racism. People just hated him for being Korean.
I have no respect for people that concern troll about some vague cultural purity to disguise their prejudices.
Well I'm convinced.
"We just want assimilation" is the palatable marketing term for "We would be fine arresting people at their immigration hearings if they are brown enough." Just look at the U.S.
What you said is the same. One is according to what your relative said another is according to what my friend said.
I don't think it's crazy to expect assimilation. We are fascinated with different countries and cultures and we generally consider it's a good idea they exist and are different. Diversity is strength. But they can only be different if they have their own culture and traditions. Would everyone be so fascinated with Japan or Korea if it was not for their culture? Would they be the same without high trust society that is made possible by it?
What's that mean to you? In my city, immigrants work, run businesses, pay taxes, have kids and send them to local schools, ride the bus, complain about the weather, practice their religion. I guess the only thing they don't do is complain as loudly about the government as (many of) the rest of us. What more could they be doing to assimilate?
So in other words he did experience racism?
> I don't think it's crazy to expect assimilation
What qualifies as assimilation is completely up to the reader. To some people, it means holding a job (although I don't know of any white people that get deported for being laid off). For some, it means not committing crimes.
For many, it doesn't matter if you have a job or if you're even born here. There is no standard of assimilation you can meet if you are ethnically different enough. That is why, again, the U.S. is currently arresting people at their immigration hearings. This is what far right politicians really want, they don't give a fuck about assimilation.
> Would everyone be so fascinated with Japan or Korea if it was not for that culture and high trust society made possible by it
Buddy, come on. Most people I know are not fascinated by Japan, they are fascinated by a romanticized idea of Japan that has been filtered through Reddit posts and Anime. They cultivate a one-dimensional understanding of the country specifically so they can daydream about it. A lot of Americans that "love" Japan would lose all interest the second they were told they can't dump their trash outside.
Not according to him.
> Most people I know are not fascinated by Japan, they are fascinated by a romanticized idea of Japan that has been filtered through Reddit posts and Anime
Somehow people I know who rave about Japan just don't watch anime that I know of. They just go there and like how everything is. The anime nerds I know don't talk about real Japan much.
If you don't have that fascination, fine. I was fascinated by tons of things there. I think most people were. And most people would say it's a horrible idea destroying that culture.
You have no specifics on how immigrants don't assimilate, and what part of the culture is worth preserving, or how you can even assimilate to a culture that is constantly developing. If I am ethnically Japanese and grow up in Japan, but I don't act like others, that is not a "lack of assimilation." That is me actively participating in a shift of the culture, and that's how everyone would see it. But if I were a different ethnicity in the same situation, I would be a problem immigrant anchor baby who is trying to destroy the culture of the country. Do you see the difference?
This idea that culture is able to be frozen in time and preserved is paradoxical. It's a cudgel used to bludgeon disadvantaged people who are perfectly functioning citizens, and even harm people who could make the country better, not worse. How do you expect immigrants to introduce new ideas to a culture if you elect politicians that will demonize and deport them if they are not sufficiently "assimilated"
I haven't been to Sweden. I take the word of people who have been there or live there elsewhere in this thread.
But elsewhere I definitely have seen communities of immigrants which don't speak local language and treat local population as less than themselves because they are of different religion.
> If I am ethnically Japanese and grow up in Japan, but I don't act like others
Examples please.
Racism is one of those things that unfortunately crosses political and social boundaries. Some groups just hide it better than others by enforcing anti-racism as a group norm.
That's not a subjective opinion I made, that is just a textbook definition of what we consider authoritative right. Left and right mean things, and they don't mean what traditionally progressive or conservative parties happen to be doing at that time.
I don’t care what textbook you are looking at, I’m looking at (or maybe writing) a different one. Left and right do not actually “mean things” if you intend for “meaning” to be universally or even widely agreed upon. I suppose for you “meaning” may only be relevant if a certain group or class agrees upon the meaning, but the rest of us will continue to say and believe what we want!
> but the rest of us will continue to say and believe what we want
Who is we? These definitions are mostly settled, and where they aren't, there are fuzzy differences, not huge gaps of disagreement. It's a shared language of understanding where people lie on a quadrant of politics. It's socially useful to have that language when posing political theory. Again, this does not mean political parties are permanently stuck to their quadrant. What do you think Republicans mean when they call themselves right wing? Nothing?
> I suppose for you “meaning” may only be relevant if a certain group or class agrees upon the meaning
What? You seem to be stuck on an idea that I am making some kind of partisan statement by saying a certain policy is left or right wing. That is not a value statement on whether it's good or bad. I don't know why you are so heated about this.
“Right-wing” politicians are arguing for nationalization in some cases and wielding industrial policy like they’re FDR. We may see price controls and even capital controls before long. The oil market interventions alone would make Stalin blush. Meanwhile they are jumping on regulation in other places, such as AI “safety”, and have floated hate speech bans (to combat antisemitism).
“Left-wing” pols (admittedly in the face of immense hate from their base) are coming out for free market solutions gently guided by the government and deregulation so we can build faster. Outside the US, you have bizarro world Labour policies in the UK (they seem to be aiming to absorb the Tories), China’s roaring Communist economy that’s the global hotbed of economic activity, etc.
The traditional categories still seem to hold in Latin America, for some reason. But that’s it.
What exactly does the left-right distraction provide except for an easily abused method for enforcing a (tenuous, completely malleable) group orthodoxy? These days it seems like people just use it as shorthand for “enemy”. Any heterodox position is automatically of the other wing, preventing adaptation to real-world circumstances. Some positions (like a land value tax) are somehow both left and right wing depending on who you ask. It’s infuriating.
> “Right-wing” politicians are arguing for nationalization in some cases and wielding industrial policy like they’re FDR
Nationalization is a policy lying on the left. State ownership of industry is the textbook left pole
> The oil market interventions alone would make Stalin blush
Price controls on markets are authoritarian left
> are coming out for free market solutions gently guided by the government and deregulation so we can build faster
Economic right, mildly libertarian
> What exactly does the left-right distraction provide except for an easily abused method for enforcing a (tenuous, completely malleable) group orthodoxy?
No, they provide categorization to resist group orthodoxy. People are going to categorize, that is human nature. Without these, the only way to categorize a policy is what the parties happen to be doing at the time. That causes a group orthodoxy. There are people describing themselves as "more left" or "more right" as a shorthand to reject group orthodoxy. There are people describing a policy as left or right, regardless of which party is doing it. You're not sparing anything by resisting policy categorization, you are making things less specific and more likely to default to broad buckets.
That doesn't mean you can't talk about the policies in specifics, it means they lie on a very flexible and descriptive map.
This tendency to force everything into a black or white frame is what gives us politicians who run without platforms, on party label alone, and who then adopt unpopular or harmful positions when in office.
At some point we decided that platforms don’t matter, and if platforms exist, they must be orthodox. This is a problem!
This sounds like you expect very few people to do this. I can't speak for others but this was exactly the first thing I did upon hearing about it, and
> Where the Örebropartiet (Örebro Party) usually are called extremist is in questions regarding immigration.
is exactly the conclusion I came to, based on their statements about "parasites". Not the integration aspect indeed...
For some people, the answer is obviously yes. For others, they'll judge Mullvad purely by its track record, audits, and technical design.
Honestly, you could say the same about the CEO of ANDURIL in the US - the Oculus guy...but he just cares about the US and wants to make money by making weapon systems etc.
Is he a bad person? Is he a patriot? Who knows, I ain't gonna play the ultimate judge game - but he did release a cool gameboy clone which is literally the closest I will ever get to his work... [1]
On the other hand, he might have other strong right-wing views that users don't agree with, and which might take precedence in one's set of priorities. If I like football and they like football, but they also want to kill me because of <other reason>, I don't think I'd want to give them my money.
Left wing thought patterns are biased toward less agency, e.g. the individual is a product of the system; systemic discrimination holds people back; one's trauma or neurodivergency is a valid anchor that makes achievements very difficult; failing to achieve is okay and doesn't reduce one's intrinsic value.
https://www.analogue.co/products
https://www.analogue.co/editions
I think these look a lot cooler, though they're less hackable.
Was the NSDAP "extreme"? They got 43.9%
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.
The other owner replied here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48696800