Stieg Larsson, My Friend

by Kurdo Baksi

  The project he was most proud of was his contribution as Nordic correspondent to the British magazine Searchlight. He often told me about his assignments in Grenada and Eritrea. In a way, perhaps, it was revenge for being rejected by the Stockholm College of Journalism on the grounds that his school leaving grades were not good enough. We had been friends for a long time before I heard about that. I tried to imagine how Stieg must have felt. He was passionate about writing on important matters and knew he could do it as well as anybody; but he failed to gain a place on a course which would have made things easier for him in many ways – work experience posts on a variety of newspapers, opportunities to build up a network of contacts while being trained.

  What did it feel like for a working-class boy from the remote north of Sweden to find the door slammed in his face? I think it was a setback that scarred Stieg for life. He once told me in confidence that if there was one person he admired, it was his grandfather Severin Boström, for his determined opposition to Hitler during the Second World War – activities that continued long after the peace treaty was signed in 1945. Perhaps it was his grandfather who was the inspiration for Stieg’s education in the university of life, far from Stockholm and academia, and who convinced him that a man can achieve a lot if he is passionate about a cause.

  3

  Expo – blowing the whistle on extremism

  Baobab trees thrive best on the savannah, where they tower majestically over the flat grassland. The branches are magnificent, but look a bit awkward compared with the enormous trunks. A baobab tree needs well-drained soil and is unique in that it can suck up such a large amount of water that it survives even long periods of drought. But it is extremely sensitive to rot and dislikes the cold. It is also known as the monkey-bread tree, after its pear-like fruits. Presumably monkeys are especially fond of them.

  If you glance quickly at a baobab tree, it almost looks as if it is growing upside down. A substantial trunk some twenty metres tall, with a small crown at the top. It is hardly surprising that there are many folktales and legends about the baobab. Most of them claim that a god became so angry with the tree that he pulled it up, roots and all, then replanted it with the branches downwards.

  I sometimes suggest that idealistic, not-for-profit magazines are like the baobab tree. The difference is that magazines suck up money rather than water. But what decides whether a magazine will survive or not is how long it can keep going during long periods of drought.

  Without a doubt, the most important project in Stieg’s life was the magazine Expo, which he and others founded as a result of his belief that it was essential to create a Swedish version of Searchlight. His view was hardly surprising: the situation in Sweden was deteriorating in a worrying way. In the 1994 elections, the Sweden Democrats polled almost fourteen thousand votes, which gave them five seats on local councils. In 1988 they had received 1,118 votes and in 1991 4,887. In other words, they were expanding quickly – disturbingly quickly. In 1991 they had won two local council seats without causing much of a reaction.

  The established parliamentary parties were not at all sure how to deal with the situation and tended to wash their hands of it, treating it as an aberration. But it turned out to be an aberration that developed into something much bigger. In the 2006 elections the Sweden Democrats got 162,463 votes and won 281 local council seats. This boil on the skin of Swedish democracy was the main reason why Expo came into existence.

  During the years it took to build Expo up from nothing, Stieg had to endure his fair share of successes and droughts. I was able to observe his indefatigability over and over again. Sometimes I am convinced that Expo cut Stieg’s life short, because of all the threats it received and the financial crises it suffered. Other times I have the feeling that it was thanks to Expo that Stieg was able to find the space his creativity needed – it was almost as if it provided the air he required in order to breathe.

  Stieg’s relationship with Expo – it really is possible to see it as a relationship between two people – was filled with happiness, creativity, setbacks and complications. Not least with love. The staff were a collection of young and hungry journalists keen to face up to big challenges. Stieg stood out for many reasons, one being his experience – in the mid-1980s he was among those who launched the anti-violence project Stop Racism. Moreover, he was the only one at the magazine over thirty.

  Starting something from nothing has advantages and disadvantages. It can be time-consuming to procure the resources necessary to make a project happen, but it is also stimulating to realize exactly what you have envisaged. Along with the others, Stieg threw himself wholeheartedly into Expo. There were big problems to solve and minor matters to sort out – the bottom line was that everything needed to be resolved in the shortest possible time.

  The first matter to be tackled was ownership. The first owner was the Hill Foundation, which eventually became the Expo Research Foundation. Next, Expo’s remit was spelled out:

  . . . to study and survey anti-democratic, right-wing extremist and racist tendencies in Swedish society. All activities are idealistic and non-profit-making. The foundation’s policy is to safeguard democracy and freedom of expression against racist, right-wing extremist, anti-Semitic and totalitarian tendencies in society. Expo has no links to specific parties or political groups, but cooperates with all individuals and groups that share the foundation’s philosophy.

  A lot of effort went into raising the necessary capital, not least in order to begin the intensive work on creating an international archive comprising thousands of books, posters, magazines, newspaper articles, videos, records and photographs linked in one way or another to racism, neo-Nazism and far-right extremism. The archive soon became unique and irreplaceable. There was only one problem: the costs had got out of hand.

  Expo moved first into basement premises in Lundagatan in the Södra district of Stockholm (Lisbeth Salander’s first flat was located in the very same street); by the end of 1995 they had moved to a cheaper basement at Färggårdstorget 32, in the Skanstull district. That same year saw the publication of the first issue. One of the pictures in it showed a person giving the Nazi salute, but hiding his face behind a partially open door.

  The editorial board could not possibly have imagined the success they went on to achieve with their first thirty-two pages. Stieg wrote the leading article about the horrific bomb outrage in Oklahoma City in April 1995, which cost 168 lives. The board was delighted to note that the matters they took up in that first issue were being discussed in lively debates in schools and workplaces, by trade unions and political parties.

  The journal immediately attracted large numbers of subscribers, several of whom paid more than the nominal fee in order to demonstrate their support. But there were also critical voices. Some commentators felt that Expo had acted in an unethical way and gone too far in its efforts to track down racist networks. Every journal with high ideals can expect criticism; much worse were the constant threats. Needless to say, a magazine that devotes so much effort to identifying racist and neo-Nazi activities will create enemies. The last thing people involved in such activities want is to find themselves in the spotlight. And they think nothing of resorting to violent tactics.

  From the very start Expo’s staff were labelled as “traitors” in neo-Nazi publications, and countless defamatory letters were sent to newspaper editors and to parliamentary parties and their youth 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 f
orced 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 Strängnäs, active neo-Nazis and members of the National Socialist Front in Skåne, and lunatics in the Keep Sweden Swedish organization in Uppsala, Västerås 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 Skåne and Östgötaland 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 Skåne. 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 Café 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 captain. That wasn’t enough. So he decided to become the team’s trainer as well. That wasn’t enough either, because he was forced to accept the fact that the number of players at his dis
posal was becoming fewer and fewer. Having urged them to take the field for one final effort, he asked the referee for extra time.

  Stieg refused to let Expo die. The idea that it was over and done for was not something that he could possibly contemplate. This despite the fact that it was clear to any objective observer that the journal was beyond help. Little did I think that I would play a leading role in the reincarnation of Expo lurking round the corner.

  I knew that Stieg was under extreme pressure. It was obvious that Expo’s misfortunes were taking their toll. We had been meeting regularly for some years and regarded each other as close friends. He called me his kid brother and I called him my big brother. At first it was mainly for fun, but as time passed the names became a true reflection of our mutual trust.

  One day in May 1998, we were in one of Stieg’s favourite cafés, Il Caffè in Kungsholmen, and I had barely taken my first sip of coffee before it became clear that he had something important on his mind.

  “Do you realize that I have very few real friends?”

  Shaking my head, I said, “Perhaps you work too hard. Friends demand time, we both know that.”

  He agreed, and looked sad, almost dejected, which was very unlike him.

  “Expo is in ruins,” he said, looking down at his feet.

  “So I’ve gathered.”

  “We haven’t been able to do any proper journalism for ages. But we do have a trump card – our archive on neo-Nazism and racism in Europe.”

  Then something remarkable happened. It was as if at that very moment Stieg began to relive everything the journal had achieved, as if the solution to all its problems had suddenly dawned on him. Presumably he had already decided what he was going to do, but he gave the impression that it was happening even as he spoke, as if his words were leading him on. It was almost as if this was the moment when he regained his faith in Expo. As if an idea had just struck like a flash of lightning and taken possession of him.