Stieg Larsson, My Friend - Kurdo Baksi [11]
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 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 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.