lightbulbish 21 hours ago
I'm Swedish, but never heard of Örebropartiet before. I tried looking into their website and it doesn't say a lot.

Translated from Swedish wikipedia: --- Örebropartiet was founded by Markus Allard in the spring of 2014, when he was recently expelled from the Left Party and the Young Left. [...] Among the party's main issues are reduced politicians' salaries, reduced bureaucracy, civil servant responsibility, assimilation policy and the repatriation of people who do not adapt. ---

I think it is very reasonable to demand that people try to integrate when coming to a new country - learn the language, get into the culture. As a Swedish person I think this is missing from our integration politics, which is an often talked about topic in the last years.

In the end this is a political question and sadly instead of engaging in dialogue the reaction to these questions feels like it most often leads to polarization and division. Inclusion means also including people with different beliefs and respecting their opinions, even if we don't share them. Through understanding comes empathy.

Can recommend "The Righteous Mind" by moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt who discusses this in a book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Righteous_Mind

Fun fact: we get a dopamine release when taking an opposing stance and then seeing (subjective) proof of our stance. It requires self-discipline and fighting your impulses to avoid polarization.

AlecSchueler 11 minutes ago
> I think it is very reasonable to demand that people try to integrate when coming to a new country - learn the language, get into the culture.

What kind of things might be involved in a mandate for people to "get into the culture?"

mortarion 22 hours 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 19 hours ago
josefritzishere 20 hours ago
Seems more complicated than that, in reading the wiki.
vrganj 22 hours ago
Would you say they are... national socialists then?

And they're not just anti-immigration, they're pro-ethnical cleansing of people already living there.

fsmedberg 22 hours ago
Try radical populist left-economic-leaning nationalists
SauciestGNU 20 hours ago
Nazbols then? Equally bad.
Saline9515 19 hours ago
There are many flavors of national socialism, in reality nazis should be called hitlerians because of this.
anonym29 21 hours ago
>they're pro-ethnical cleansing of people already living there

source?

gpm 21 hours 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 7 hours 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 21 hours 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.
10xDev 21 hours ago
You are essentially calling for a civil war. Reason why Russia pushes these ideas under fake "patriot" accounts.
ShinyLeftPad 21 hours ago
Would it be a civil war if it was a law passed by elected government?
axus 21 hours ago
ShinyLeftPad 20 hours ago
Wasn't that secession? If part of Sweden decides to separate then we could discuss it in that context I guess.
anonym29 16 hours 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!
teh64 19 hours 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 16 hours 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 14 hours 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 5 hours 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 15 hours 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 16 hours 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 15 hours 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 13 hours 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 6 hours 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.

anonym29 16 hours 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 21 hours 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 4 hours ago
did india ethnical cleanse out the british when they expelled even british indian born nationals?
whalesalad 22 hours ago
Wild. I spent about 3 months living in Örebro while on contract with a company based there.
gpm 22 hours 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 21 hours 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 19 hours 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 18 hours ago
Weird, I didn't think I was throwing technocracy under the bus. What makes you say that?
iamnothere 19 hours 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 21 hours ago
By your logic USSR was far right.
gpm 21 hours ago
No, I'm fairly sure you could not find a quote like that about the USSR.
ShinyLeftPad 21 hours 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 21 hours 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 21 hours 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 20 hours 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 13 hours ago
Whoever downvotd you is unaware that the USSR tried a seven day work week. It was not about workers.
Saline9515 19 hours 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 21 hours 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 21 hours 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 21 hours ago
> cutting social services

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

creaturemachine 21 hours ago
National Socialism in a nutshell.
rationalist 21 hours 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 19 hours 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)

kfreds 4 hours ago
Hi,

Mullvad has two owners, founders, and CEOs - Daniel Berntsson, and me, Fredrik Strömberg. All posts I've seen yesterday and today, including the newspaper articles, talk about Mullvad as if Daniel is the single owner, founder and CEO. It should be obvious that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission.

If you have any questions, comments or concerns you're welcome to comment on this thread, or email our customer support.

See below for the response you'll get from support:

-----

Mullvad is a political company. We fight for freedom of speech, freedom of information and the right to privacy. These are firmly held values of the founders of Mullvad.

Mullvad protects the right for people to express things we don't agree with. We protect the right of everyone to access views we don't agree with.

We also live these values by being tolerant in our daily work. Everyone is welcome to collaborate with Mullvad if they share these narrow core values. As employees, contractors, customers, suppliers, lobbyists, campaign partners or whatever it might be. No matter what their other opinions are and no matter whether the founders or anyone else in Mullvad dislike them. The founders themselves fundamentally disagree on several important issues.

This is what allows us to advance our common causes. Being in a tolerant and intellectually open environment is also liberating and promotes truth seeking.

The more people do this, the better a place the world will be.

It should be obvious that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission, in the same way that someone's opinions on animal rights, taxes or public healthcare policy isn't.

That said, if you no longer want to be a Mullvad customer for philosophical reasons, we think it's important to honor that. In that case, reach out to support.

actualwitch 54 minutes ago
Hello Fredrik! As a heavy user of Mullvad in the past, easily spending hundreds of euros over the years, I was reserving my judgement to see what the official statement on this would be. Thank you, now I have my answer.

> It should be obvious that Daniel's private donation to a political party is not part of Mullvad's values or mission.

It should be obvious that what people are concerned is their money being used to support these political causes, whether it was done in a way that keeps the company out of it or not is besides the point. Daniel, of course, is free to choose what to do with his money. I am, too, and based on this I will be making a choice to not spend any more money on Mullvad subscriptions. Nothing personal, and it's a shame because I have nothing but praise for the technical side of it. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

vrganj 27 minutes ago
Hi Fredrik, long time user of your service.

I have to say, this is a disappointing message. The thing about intolerant movements is that tolerance doesn't fix them, it makes them worse and lets them accumulate power until they can destroy the tolerant.

I'd recommend reading Karl Popper and his Paradox of Tolerance, which he formulated after seeing this exact thing play out in his native Austria with the rise of the Nazis.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance

mrtksn 22 hours ago
I am surprised that people are surprised, all these services are by people for people who are marginalized. Therefore, they are either far-right or far-left. When its business, its more likely to be a far-right since they are more business-oriented. The far left folks usually make a repo and give it away or try to organize some collective effort.
greggoB 22 hours ago
> for people who are marginalized. Therefore, they are either far-right or far-left.

There are many types of marginalised groups, and many other reasons to want to use VPNs. Putting everything on a left-right political axis seems more than a tad reductive.

mrtksn 22 hours ago
Sure but far left and far right is a crude default way to generalize, the left folks will be especially annoyed by this but its still useful when the specifics don't matter.
jaykru 22 hours ago
The party in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96rebro_Party. Doesn't sound extremist far-right to me. Many of its positions would be considered center-left or even far left in much of the world.
SCdF 22 hours ago
Additional context here is that they donated 75% of *all donations* to that party last year. 3x everyone else combined.

And that party is not just "kind of right wing", they believe in large scale "remigration" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remigration), which, to save you clicking the link, means "a far-right concept referring to the ethnic cleansing via mass deportation of non-white minority populations, especially immigrants and sometimes including native-born citizens, to their place of racial ancestry".

There is a wealth of difference between when random companies throw a few thousand at whatever the leading parties are, and this.

10xDev 22 hours ago
As economies shrink and jobs become scarce, we may reach pre-ww2 order.
nisegami 21 hours ago
It's funny how remigration never involves sending white folk back to europe.
JuniperMesos 21 hours ago
That's because there are no nonwhite countries in the world that white people immigrate to en masse because living conditions there are better than in their own countries. There's a real racial asymmetry in the world between whites and nonwhites in terms of building countries people wish to live in.
10xDev 21 hours ago
You certainly see a lot of tourists and expats. And it is easy to see the worst behaving ones especially in parts of Asia.
nisegami 21 hours ago
I meant from the Americas
JuniperMesos 13 hours ago
There's only two white countries in the Americas, the United States and Canada, which got that way by being Anglo settler-colonies whose governments were founded by white, mostly-English people who conquered the land from a relatively sparse native American population and did not intermix with that population in great numbers.

Every other country in the Americas was originally founded by Spanish or Portuguese or other non-Anglo European colonial powers, who generally had much larger native American populations, and did have substantial population intermixing; which is why today people in the US and Canada consider the entire racial category "Latino" - which was formed by exactly that admixture event - to be nonwhite, even though in Latin America itself individuals vary widely in exactly what proportions of white, native American, and black ancestry they have.

There are people, often native American nationalists or far-leftists sympathetic to native American nationalists because they are nonwhite, who do support remigration of whites from the United States and Canada. The most fundamental problems with this argument are that 1) the number of white people in these countries is much larger than the number of actual indigenous people and has already demographically swamped the indigenous many centuries ago; and 2) there was never any native American government with anywhere near the state capacity to even have immigration laws, let alone enforce them, at any point in history. Modern levels of state capacity are basically an invention of Western European technological modernity and came out of the same half-millenium-old process of historical development that lead to the conquest of North America by non-admixed whites to begin with. The very land areas recognized by international law that we label the United States and Canada are themselves white creations; there's zero indigenous American political or cultural continuity involved with them (which is indeed a major political grievance of native Americans and their political allies). There's no prior indigenous state that could be returned to after the expulsion of whites, if that were even physically tractable.

eudamoniac 20 hours ago
This of course means that all of those latter countries need to import millions of people from the other countries because this is bound to increase the quality of the good country, somehow.
elzbardico 21 hours ago
Do you live in Sweden, do you know the context of the mass migration it ocurred there? the social economic effects?
anonym29 21 hours ago
>ethnic cleansing via mass deportation

"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.

freediddy 21 hours ago
Did anyone actually look into the "far-right" party that this purports to be?

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.

fsmedberg 22 hours ago
Swede here. That's not even close to accurate. Örebropartiet is not extremist, but I would absolutely label them radical populist left-economic-leaning nationalists. Please do some research and make up your own mind. They're a tiny local party active in Örebro municipality where their founder and leader loudly points out clearly wasteful use of government funds, or more or less corrupt decisions made by leading party figures in other parties on local matters. The party leader is known for ridiculing competing parties party members on debates.

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.

Capricorn2481 21 hours ago
> 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.

ShinyLeftPad 21 hours ago
A friend of mine who is a non Japanese Asian lived in Japan and when asked said there's no racism. There's mild cases but if you are careful to follow the customs and speak the language, you are generally accepted as a Japanese in daily life.
Capricorn2481 21 hours ago
> A friend of mine who is a non Japanese Asian lived in Japan and when asked said there's no racism

Well I'm convinced.

ShinyLeftPad 21 hours ago
:shrug: same back to you?
Capricorn2481 21 hours ago
No, there's a fundamental difference between what we both wrote. There's a difference between saying "I know someone who has experienced racism" and "My friend says there's no racism in X country." One is a personal experience, the other invalidates the experiences of everyone else. They are not two sides of the same coin like you are implying. If you take the phrase "There is no racism in Japan" at face value, you are either pushing an agenda or falling for someone else's.

"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.

ShinyLeftPad 21 hours ago
Rewrite my comment to say "my friend experienced no racism". Not more than in his home country at least.

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?

Frondo 19 hours ago
> I don't think it's crazy to expect assimilation.

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?

ShinyLeftPad 18 hours ago
Probably nothing. Looks good to me, they speak your language, have jobs (don't abuse welfare), pay taxes, live legally. Reading about the party it seemed that they want to kick out people far from what you described (which can be still wrong, idk, but I'm not sure it's so outrageous I would boycott a business over its owner's preference). If they campaign to kick out people who are like what you described then I would think harder.
Frondo 17 hours ago
One note: I didn't say anything about the language they speak, and what language other people speak is none of my business.
ShinyLeftPad 5 hours ago
How do you know they complain about the weather, if they don't speak your language?
Capricorn2481 18 hours ago
> Not more than in his home country at least

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.

ShinyLeftPad 18 hours ago
> So in other words he did experience racism?

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.

Capricorn2481 17 hours ago
You are completely dodging the topic of assimilation. You are implying that Japan is great because it's culturally homogeneous, and the reason it's culturally homogeneous is because people assimilate, and therefore Sweden deporting teenagers is morally right because they are protecting their own culture from people that don't assimilate.

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"

iamnothere 19 hours ago
Racism != rightism. It is even possible to be both Communist and racist. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism_in_the_Soviet_Union

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.

Capricorn2481 17 hours ago
Racism definitely crosses all boundaries, but deporting people on the grounds they are not culturally aligned is what we'd call a positionally right policy. That does not mean left wing parties can't do it. It means it lies right on the political spectrum.

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.

iamnothere 17 hours ago
Left and right refers to where the Girondins and the Montagnards/Jacobins sat in the French revolutionary assembly. We’ve bastardized this into imaginary delineations of political positioning and for some reason we keep bolting on arbitrary positions as Girondin or Jacobin.

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!

Capricorn2481 14 hours ago
You are being needlessly contradictory, in a pointlessly academic way. I can assure you nobody thinks of left or right as the French revolutionary assembly, any more than we think of "Wednesday" as the day of the Norse god Odin, or "a sandwich" as the Earl of Sandwich's gambling snack. The Etymological origin doesn't determine current meaning.

> 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.

iamnothere 13 hours ago
There is no shared language anymore, and I’m tired of pretending that there is. The 20th century notion of left and right, which was itself a fantasy, has been turned into a tool of propaganda. It does nothing but muddy the waters.

“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.

tastyface 21 hours ago
All white nationalist parties describe themselves in these neutral terms, of course. I've yet to find a hardline anti-immigration party that is not also virulently racist.
ndegruchy 22 hours ago
Disappointing if true. I can't read the original article[1], but the translation seems to agree. I've paid for Mullvad for _years_. Looks like I'll be taking my money elsewhere.

[1]: https://www.flamman.se/techprofil-ger-miljoner-till-orebropa...

fsmedberg 21 hours ago
Article by a news media outlet that is considered very far left (communist). Try finding the same claim or description in any national Swedish media. You won't.
XorNot 22 hours ago
I have Mullvad to avoid age check gateways, not super anonymity. I'll absolutely be taking my business elsewhere.
Gud 5 hours ago
Because of hyperbolic headlines?
mhitza 22 hours ago
Any of the Swedes in here can corroborate the claims in the article about this right wing group? Especially about the extreme anti-immigration statements and put that in full translation and context?

Also what this group leader has done in Örebro to contextualize this quote

> ”I hope they will do similar things on the national level as in Örebro”, writes Daniel Berntsson to Flamman.

ninjin 21 hours ago
Tried to find something from the party itself, but found nothing on their homepage other than that they plan to publish a party programme "gradually, starting some time during the summer of 2026".

https://www.orebropartiet.se/var-politik/

fsmedberg 21 hours ago
The claims in the social media post is pure bullshit. The party is a tiny (read: one person elected) radical populist left-economic-leaning nationalists. They have gained popularity for pointing out wasteful use of Örebro's municipalities resources, and their leader's fondness of lengthy ridiculing other parties politicians in lengthy debates, that he often publish on Instagram and YouTube.
mhitza 21 hours ago
Thank you for providing context.

Are his public stances on immigration precisely stated as remigration, or does he describe a thing such as remigration without explicitly naming it as such?

About his quote from wikipedia "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." which links to this video tweet https://x.com/AllardKlipp/status/2060109271635771457 can you give full context/translation?

yaris 20 hours ago
He says what is quoted when talking about criminals with immigrant roots. "Those [criminals] - they should get out, even if they were born in Sweden, because they do not have a connection to Sweden. They received a swedish passport but they have not become swedish [as belonging to swedish culture]. They are not interested [in becoming swedish] and here I'm ready to go on corpses...". Overall his stance on immigration (taken from this video) is not as extreme as one can imagine reading HN comments. It is extreme but not to the extent that he's ready to push out anyone whos granddad was not Andersson.
nargek 19 hours ago
It is an extreme point of view, it's just that far right is booming everywhere.
Pazzaz 16 hours ago
> read: one person elected

No, they have 8 people elected: 3 in the region, 5 in the municipality.

They got 4,46 % of the votes in the region, and 7,92 % in the municipality. And who knows, maybe they'll use that 5 million SEK to get more seats in this years election.

basisword 22 hours ago
What's going on? Proton faced a similar scandal recently. I think in their case sponsored a video by a far right vlogger. After that I saw people recommending Mullvad as an alternative.
bl4kers 12 hours ago
Tweet from Proton's CEO last year: "10 years ago, Republicans were the party of big business and Dems stood for the little guys, but today the tables have completely turned."

He repeatedly said his statement was politically neutral.

ar_lan 21 hours ago
This is a bizarre thread.

People are surprised that a privacy-oriented businessman is right-wing is very strange.

"Millions" in the title is also misleading in this context - it's millions in Swedish Kronor, which is roughly $500K USD. A lot, but the title seems intentionally misleading.

I've also never really understood the cycle of boycotting things because you don't like how an individual spends their own money. Almost every company will employ people who have values you severely disagree with, and put money toward those causes. And turning to Proton as the alternative is... a choice?

jlongr 20 hours ago
You're mischaracterizing what most people are taking issue with. Being dense, honestly.
ar_lan 18 hours ago
You're misinterpreting what I said. Being dense, honestly.

The start of this thread was primarily people saying they were taking their money elsewhere - and then suggesting Proton, whose CEO was in the hot seat for praising the Republican party. It makes no sense to have such a violent reaction to something like this and not consider that competitors could be similar.

The reality is that in general, your money is always going to somebody you don't want it to go to.

ktosobcy 22 hours ago
I'm still amused that so many people got brainwashed into thinking that VPNs give privacy :D
gib444 5 hours ago
If my house isn't a fortress I should just leave my doors open :D

I'm so clever, everyone else is stupid