[stego-tech]

It’s Cloudflare and Stormfront all over again, at least from my perspective. As much as folks want to somehow find a way to separate a company from its leadership or founders, the reality is that giving money to Mullvad rewards someone who in turn gives their share of the money to, well, fascist scumbags.

People need to understand taking that position is itself free speech. Nobody is saying he can’t give money to Nazis or fascists or some other problematic group, what we’re saying is that there are consequences for doing so. If Mullvad wanted to distance itself from these problematic positions or people, they could just buy them out and tell them to fuck off. That, too, is a perfectly valid response that doesn’t impugn upon anyone’s speech.

The problem with people claiming to be pro-free speech or anti-censorship while supporting authoritarian regimes or ideologies is that the two are inherently in conflict: the absolute last thing a fascist actually wants is freedom of speech, and so hiding behind such a virtuous shield while directly contributing to groups whose goals would dismantle and destroy that shield wholesale is such a naked act of hypocrisy that anything else they say or do should be suspect.

Mullvad’s position, much like Cloudflare’s before it, is that we must tolerate the intolerant, even though the goals of the intolerant are to exterminate tolerance. This is the sort of Middle School thought experiment that should be a no-brainer, yet here we are again. For a company like Mullvad, that undermines their core currency - trust - at a foundational level that’s impossible to reconcile.