The relevance of this story does not come from a obvious "wrong" in the support of political value X. Infact Mullvad is clearly politically active, supporting "individual-privacy" in legislation processes multiple times. This is expected. The 'problem' is build from multiple assumptions.
1. Owner, Co-Owner, director, etc. Have direct immediate unchecked control over "the product" 2. The actual content of far-X Politics in inheritly unpopular. Else it wouldn't be "Far" from anything. This is also why propaganda and populism are necessary. 3. Far-X politics DEPENDS on direct control (information and excercise) because of (2.)
Therefore --> Owner Opinions become Company opinions. And owner(company) supports ideological politics that are fundamentally opposed to product and broader HN views.
The average person who wants (or sells) a car probably doesn't have many strong feels on politics. The average person who goes out of their way to be to buy a specific privacy focused VPN is probably a bit more in tune politically and likely to have stronger feelings.
So no, it's not just companies that are "critical to freedom and privacy".
Not sure why it's such an issue to discuss the political views of the beneficiaries of services we use. I understand it's mostly uninteresting as far as comment sections go, but it's always bizarre to see a defense of political association when often the impetus for sharing this type of information is for people/consumers to exercise their right to associate with business based on their political outlook.
He's perfectly entitled to hold whatever loony political views he wants. I haven't seen anyone calling for his arrest.
But customers are also entitled to decide whether or not to keep supporting a company for whatever reasons they choose, including the political ideology of its CEOs.