Hungary Anti-Semitic Page Yanked by Facebook
Image by getty images
Facebook removed an official fan page of Kuruc.info — a U.S.-based website in Hungarian which features anti-Semitic hate speech and propaganda by Hungary’s ultranationalist Jobbik Party.
The removal on Wednesday of the Facebook page, which had garnered 70,000 followers, came following a plea to Facebook by the New York-based Anti-Defamation League, or ADL, and its Hungarian counterpart, the Hungarian Jewish community’s Budapest-based Action and Protection Foundation.
Several Jewish organizations hailed the closure of the Facebook page as an important step toward limiting the reach of the anti-Semitic, anti-Roma, homophobic and anti-Democratic messages of Jobbik, Hungary’s third largest party.
But within hours, individuals with ties to Kuruc were able to open a new page on Facebook, a social network run by Facebook Inc. — an American private company whose main offices are based in Menlo Park, California, south of San Francisco. Kuruc’s new Facebook page acquired nearly 6,000 followers almost immediately after its opening.
Still, the ADL praised Facebook for closing the original Facebook page of Kuruc, which ADL National Director Abraham Foxman said was “conveying threats against Jews and Roma, inciting to violence, spreading vile anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial, all of which are crimes in Hungary.”
According to Laszlo Bartus, editor-in-chief of the Amerikai Magyar Népszava, the oldest Hungarian-language paper in the United States, Hungarian authorities have tried to shut down Kuruc.info but failed because its servers are based in the U.S., which has more liberal legislation than Hungary’s on the limits of free speech.
“The deletion of the Facebook page of Kuruc.info is a first victory,” said Joel Rubinfeld, co-chair of the European Jewish Parliament. “Now, the actual website Kuruc.info, which is the non-official front of the Jobbik neo-Nazi party, must be shut down. In the interest of preventing the repetition of worst times of European history, it is high time for turning off the cyber faucets of hate.”
This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.
This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.
With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
