Facebook Restores Hungarian Minister’s Anti-Migrant Video

  • Lazar alleged that ‘white’ Austrians live in fear of Muslims
  • Facebook said it was making an exception to hate-speech rules

Janos Lazar 

Photographer: Attila Kisbenedek/AFP via Getty Images

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Facebook Inc. removed and then reinstated a video of a senior Hungarian minister in which he tried to portray white people in neighboring Austria as living in fear of Muslims in a warning to voters before his country’s elections next month.

Facebook restored the video late Wednesday, hours after removing the footage for violating its principles forbidding comments that attack people based on their racial, ethnic or religious identity. The video by the head of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s office, Janos Lazar, is part of an intensifying anti-immigrant campaign by the premier’s Fidesz party ahead of parliamentary elections on April 8.