Stieg Larsson, My Friend

sections. The first organized hate campaign took place in May of 1996 – fifteen months after Expo’s launch – when the magazine’s printer’s premises were sabotaged. Every window was smashed and totally demolished using glass-cutters, in order to demonstrate how easily the building could be entered if the firm continued to print Expo. Retailers offering Expo for sale suffered similar attacks and walls were sprayed with the message “Don’t Print Expo!”

Of course, attacks of this kind often have a positive side: they set people talking. The subsequent debate means that editors and commentators are forced to take sides, and that in turn leads to discussion points rising to the surface. Very few people want to live in a society where you put your life in danger by printing a magazine.

In any case, it was obvious that a lot of people were actually jealous of all the attention Expo had been lucky enough to attract in such a short time. Some commentators stood the situation on its head and wondered how much support a right-wing-extremist equivalent of Expo would receive if it suffered a similar attack. Expo’s new editor-in-chief, Andreas Rosenlund, made several brilliant contributions to the debate that followed. He summarized the situation by pointing out that “instead of trying to conduct a democratic exchange of views, these people turn to gangster tactics”.

Despite all the support the journal received during these difficult weeks, nobody was able to convince the printers that it was a price worth paying for freedom of speech. They had been so scared that they felt obliged to cancel their contract with Expo.

It was not necessary to call in a world-class sleuth in order to work out who was behind the campaign of violence directed at retailers selling Expo. The neo-Nazi newspaper Info- 14 – which, remarkably enough, produced its first edition the same year, 1995 – reported promptly and in detail on how the attacks had been carried out, going so far as to propose new targets. As well as being a newspaper, Info-14 was a political outlet for the National Alliance. Its founder, Robert Vesterlund, was also chairman of Sweden Democratic Youth. The police interrogated large numbers of people associated with the newspaper, but never managed to bring anybody to trial.

As so often happens, the racist attacks had the opposite effect to what had been intended. On 10 June, 1996, the editorial boards of Sweden’s two biggest evening newspapers, Aftonbladet and Expressen, decided to demonstrate their solidarity with Expo by publishing and distributing without charge an edition of the journal together with one of their own issues, with a print run of over eight hundred thousand.

Expo’s list of subscribers increased significantly, and the smile on Stieg’s lips became broader than ever. He even plucked up enough courage to joke about the thugs threatening him, calling them his “prey”. They consisted of a motley collection of latent neo-Nazis in Strangnas, active neo-Nazis and members of the National Socialist Front in Skane, and lunatics in the Keep Sweden Swedish organization in Uppsala, Vasteras and Helsingborg. Several of them were subscribers, even though their motivation had nothing to do with boosting Expo’s finances. They would open each new issue in a state of expectancy: would fingers be pointed at them in one of the articles? Some of them considered it a significant milestone in their careers as racists, being mentioned by name in Expo. No doubt many of them were excused from paying for a round or two of beer in pubs in Skane and Ostgotaland as a result.

Sad to say, however, the attacks on printing works and retail outlets were only the beginning. It was not long before worse atrocities took place, often in Stieg’s and my backyard. I am sometimes shattered by memories of what happened in those days.

A cursory glance at press cuttings from the time reveals a remarkable phenomenon. Quite a lot of people in Sweden are murdered by neo-Nazis shortly after parliamentary elections. According to statistics, the year after an election can be critical for people who don’t “look Swedish” and who have names that are difficult to pronounce, Swedish anti-racists, anybody who has adopted a non-Scandinavian child, local politicians and journalists who expose racist tendencies.

Of all the horrific racist outrages, one stands out. It took place on 16 August, 1995, at Lake Ingetorp in Kode, near Gothenburg. A fourteen-year-old boy, John Hron, had gone there camping with a friend. They had been looking forward to this outing, but the situation changed drastically when four young neo-Nazis turned up. The two boys were subjected to psychological and physical torture for three hours. John escaped by swimming out into the lake, but was forced to return when the neo-Nazis threatened to kill his friend. He swam back, at which point they turned their full attention on him. Having allowed his friend to escape, they subjected John to sophisticated torture: they would beat and kick him for a while, then change tactics and speak nicely to him, offering him a beer. In the end, having rendered him unconscious, they threw him into the water and watched him drown.

How can one explain such unprovoked violence? Is it possible to understand such bestial treatment simply because somebody has a foreign-sounding name?

The next victim of racist violence was Patrick Nadji, an asylumseeker from the Ivory Coast. Two young neo- Nazis stabbed Patrick to death in Klippan, in Skane. Why? “Because,” according to the murderers, “he was a nigger.” Moreover, the young man wielding the knife considered himself to be innocent: “I didn’t do nothing. The nigger just jumped on to my knife.”

It is one thing to associate neo-Nazi crimes with disaffected young people – it is no doubt possible to find all sorts of extenuating circumstances. But nobody should imagine that these were simply cases of isolated individuals acting out their fantasies about national superiority, ethnic cleansing and their other twisted ideologies. Expo was not content with exposing them as individuals. More important was the fact that there was increasing support for xenophobic tendencies in Swedish society. That was the root cause of the increase in hate crimes.

Despite Expo’s many sympathizers, problems soon started piling up. As the threats increased, advertising decreased. The number of subscribers sank steadily towards a thousand – the goal originally had been five thousand, but even when the journal was enjoying its greatest success, in the spring of 1996, the number was no more than two thousand.

In addition, one of the journal’s staff stole 50,000 kronor from the sparse kitty because, as he put it, he needed money “to pick up women at Cafe Opera”. To crown it all, a serious credibility problem arose when it was disclosed that one of Expo’s researchers had been reported to the police for criminal damage.

But the most serious threat to Expo’s existence was that there were too many colleagues pulling in different directions. Everybody worked almost 24/7. They woke up to Expo and dreamt of Expo. There was no time to stop and think; all that mattered was hard work, generally unpaid. There came a point when Stieg demanded even more sacrifices, but his colleagues felt they had given up enough of their time and their private lives. His solution was to work even harder. Everybody was aware of his inexhaustible capacity for work. The problem was that he demanded just as much of his colleagues as he did from himself.

Despite the enormous amount of work put into it, the journal found itself teetering on the brink of bankruptcy. In the end it was obvious to everybody that even Stieg was under extreme pressure. He seemed more and more worried, and his smile became increasingly strained. The prophets of doom were only too ready to put the boot in. They said Stieg was not cut out to be a manager, that he was a catastrophe as an administrator and financial officer. In many ways they were right. Stieg was fantastic with language, but only human (to say the least) when it came to figures and statistics. He was driven by the conviction that Sweden required a journal to keep an eye on anti-democratic developments. In order to produce one, he needed a closely knit team to work tirelessly on an idealistic basis for little financial reward.

That was when everything unravelled. Several contributors resigned from the editorial board, which in turn meant that those who stayed on had to work even harder. Stieg never really forgave the ones who left, even though he must have realized that, less than three years after its launch, Expo was about to sink.

During 1996 and 1997 the editorial board could have been compared to a football team. It comprised Stieg, Andreas, Jenny, Emmy, Tobias, Katarina, Peter, David, Micael, Mikael and a graphic designer. Stieg began as goalkeeper, in order to have the best possible overall view. But as colleagues resigned he also became team