Stieg Larsson, My Friend - Kurdo Baksi [18]
Time was beginning to run out for our first combined issue. It was to contain no more than eight Expo pages: a single-column leader, four news reports, a commentary and a review. Stieg’s article was still outstanding, and was essential if everything was to fit together with the Svartvitt material. That is what we had agreed, and it was important that nothing went wrong. We had too many critics just waiting to pounce if we made a mess of things. And we were in desperate need of new subscribers. In no circumstances must we publish late and give the impression of being unprofessional.
When Stieg turned up at the editorial office just inside the deadline with his article, I quickly realized that it was not what we had agreed on. It was in fact a book, forty pages long, entitled Euro-Nat – A Europe for Anti-Semites, Ethnic Warriors and Political Crackpots – The Sweden Democrats’ International Network .
“It’s urgent,” he said. “Can you publish it?”
“I’ll read it by tomorrow.”
“No, you must read it now, right away.”
“But I have to make sure we don’t find ourselves with all sorts of legal problems. We can’t afford that.”
“You don’t need to worry. The only people I’ve named fully are elected officials. All the others are referred to only by their first names. You’re not risking anything. Can you give me an ISBN number from your Svartvitt list?”
I took a deep breath, closed my eyes and got up to fetch the list. It did occur to me that the book would be an excellent introduction to the partnership between Svartvitt and Expo.
In other words, I found myself becoming the publisher of a book I had never read. This was a reflection of how much confidence I had in Stieg. If he said that the book was important and there were no potential legal problems, I trusted him. The first thing I saw on my desk after his death was a copy of the jacket blurb for that book. It reminded me of the meeting I have just described. Stieg had written the text himself:
In the 1998 elections the Sweden Democrats polled twenty thousand votes and won eight local council seats. That meant they were the third-largest party with no representation in the national parliament, and now they are setting their sights on the 1999 E.U. elections. They hope to hoover up votes from New Democracy, which has collapsed, and from other protest parties. The keyword in the Sweden Democrats’ campaign is “respectability”. This spruced-up façade is in stark contrast with the party’s history, and its membership of the international movements Nord-Nat and Euro-Nat.
There was undeniably something electric about Stieg’s presence. If you managed to interpret the signals he sent out correctly, your whole environment was lit up. But if you misunderstood his intentions, he could burn everything that got in his way – including himself. So he was both a dream and a nightmare to work with. He was not merely seriously involved, but rather obsessed with the struggle to overcome intolerance. And he always acted spontaneously. When one least expected it, he was apt to come out with long quotations in order to illustrate his arguments. A lot of people called him un-Swedish, but I have never been able to accept that. It simply doesn’t fit comfortably with his view of the world.
Every time I think about our meetings, it strikes me that some people might think that our contact was always linked with the work we did together. I have never seen it like that. It was about as far away from a working relationship as it’s possible to get. It would be truer to say that our work was a part of our friendship.
On 30 November, 1998, T.T. issued a newsflash. The anti-racist journal Expo had been resurrected, thanks to a merger with the magazine Svartvitt.
I was quoted: “Expo has been outstandingly good at investigating racism, but they have never grasped how to make money. That is where I can help them.”
According to the newsflash, the new version of Expo hoped to sell four thousand copies to start with and eventually nine