Racist website ordered to delete article denying the Holocaust

As a Court rules against the anti-Semitic and anti-Roma website kuruc.info, a liberal blogger calls the legal ban of Holocaust denial counterproductive. A left-wing lawyer criticizes the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (TASZ) for offering legal help to the radical website.

Following a legal proceeding initiated by the Office of the Prosecutor General, the Budapest Court ruled that an article published on the racist kuruc.info website qualified as Holocaust denial and ordered the website, whose data is stored on US servers, to delete the article. The editors of the website (who keep their names secret) said they would not comply with the Court’s verdict. The Office of the Prosecutor announced that it will turn to the US authorities in order to have the article deleted. The Hungarian Civil Liberties Union (TASZ) offered help to the website claiming that free speech should be defended. The kuruc.info editors rejected the offer claiming that TASZ often defends Roma, homosexuals, drug users and other “deviants”.

In Kettős Mérce, András Jámbor finds kuruc.info “a radical, disgusting anti-Semitic and racist webpage”, yet he also finds the court’s ruling “stupid and harmful”. The liberal blogger maintains that Holocaust denial is a social problem that cannot be remedied through legal action. He goes on to add that the sentence will only serve as publicity for the racist website. Jámbor speculates that banning such articles will create a precedent to limit free speech.

Zsuzsa Sándor, a left-wing lawyer and fomer judge finds it outrageous that TASZ offered help to the racist website. Sándor claims that it is irresponsible to defend US free speech in Europe where six million Jews, Roma and homosexuals were murdered by Nazis seventy years ago. Sándor believes that TASZ’s offer gives further publicity to the racist website and wonders why TASZ does not support free speech for paedophiles.

Tags: far-right, free speech, racism, TASZ