Anton Maegerle

Anton Maegerle is the nom de plume of the German Social Democratic journalist Gernot Modery.[1][2] He is also the author of books about far-right politics, right-wing radicalism, the New Right, and right-wing policy in general.

Personal life

Since Neo-Nazi activists have issued death threats against Maegerle, his true identity is secret and he and his family live under police protection. Only very few personal details of his life and career are known to the public. He was allegedly 40 years old in 2002, and lives in a village in Southern Germany, where he always lived except when he was studying social science.[3] During the time of his studies, the German right-wing party The Republicans was founded.[3] He describes this occasion as the “priming” for his activism.[3] He himself is a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD). After finishing his studies he moved home and started to make his inquiries.[3] His neighbors deemed him to be unemployed because they never saw him working, until he was visited by the police because he had received several threats.[3] His articles and books are published under his pseudonym.[3]

Work

Maegerle started collecting information on the right-wing party The Republicans in 1983, and observes right-wing extremists as well as right-wing conservative circles in Germany and abroad. Maegerle's database contains some 550,000 items and data on ca. 17,000 individuals, and is said to be one of the largest of its kind, providing information to journalists and governments agencies including the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution. In 2001, he published a book against right-wing extremism in Baden-Württemberg together with the president of the Landesamt für Verfassungsschutz Helmut Rannacher.[4] Maegerle also collects information on right-wing extremist, xenophobic and anti-semitic acts of violence, regularly publishing chronicles of such events.

In the past he has worked for the public broadcasting ARD TV shows Panorama and Report Mainz; the Berliner Zeitung ; the Federal Agency for Civic Education ; the news magazine Stern ; and Die Welt Die WELT. He is a regular contributor to the controversial government-funded Internet newsletter Blick nach Rechts (View to the Right) and wrote for the Informationsdienst gegen Rechtsextremismus (Information Service against Right-Wing Extremism) until it was closed down in 2006. As a result of his feature in Report Mainz in 2000 several banks cancelled the bank accounts of right-wing extremists.[3]

Maegerle belongs to the critics of the Ingolstadt Research Institute for Contemporary Historical Research, a portrayal of which published he published in 1996 in the View to the Right.[5]

Honors

On 16 November 2007 Netzwerk Recherche awarded Maegerle, Andrea Röpke and Thomas Kuban its "Lighttower Award".[6]

Reaction

Some Conservatives accuse Maegerle's work of containing a leftist bias because he makes nearly no distinction between Conservatives and Nazis, and criticize that he receives public money for this.[7] For example, Maegerle defends the use of political correctness, and published an article in the left-wing newspaper Jungle World during the German federal election, 2002 in which he, as a SPD member, accused CDU chancellor candidate Edmund Stoiber of having "best ties to the twillight zone of right-wing extremism".[8][9] The extremism researcher Eckhard Jesse has criticized Maegerle for "scent[ing] in the well-known Antifa manner almost everywhere right-wing extremists."[10]

In 1996, Maegerle's real name was exposed by "nationalist-pacifist", Neue Rechte[11] politician Alfred Mechtersheimer.[3][12][13]

The Holocaust denier Germar Rudolf published under the name Anton Mägerle in order to discredit the journalist's research on Holocaust denial.[3]

In 2007, Felix Krautkrämer, an editor of Junge Freiheit claimed repeated, Maegerle is a far left extremist and he publishes in multiple far left media. Maegerle filed a lawsuit against the claim that he is still publishing in four of the far left media mentioned by name. Krautkrämer, as well as Focus' Michael Klonovsky, were later ordered by a court not to repeat this claim.[14]

Publications

together with Martin Dietzsch
together with Friedrich Paul Heller

References

  1. ↑ Joachim Schäfer, Bettina Röhl Stigmatisiert: der Terror der Gutmenschen : verfolgt, verurteilt, verbannt: Siegmar Faust, Hans Filbinger, Lothar Groppe, Steffen Heitmann, Ernst Nolte, Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof, Kurt Waldheim u.a.m. Aton, 2003. S. 144
  2. ↑ Alice Brauner-Orthen Die Neue Rechte in Deutschland: antidemokratische und rassistische Tendenzen. Leske + Budrich, 2001. S. 149
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Annett Heide: "Sammler und Jäger", Berliner Zeitung, 15 April 2002
  4. ↑ Rechtsextremismus in Baden-Württemberg, Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung Baden-Württemberg, 2001
  5. ↑ Kämpfer für eine neue Zeitgeschichte in Blick nach Rechts, 29 May 1996
  6. ↑ Leuchtturm 2007 geht an Andrea Röpke, Anton Maegerle und Thomas Kuban
  7. ↑
  8. ↑ Martin Dietzsch / Anton Maegerle: Kampfbegriff aller Rechten: „Political Correctness“. Duisburger Institut für Sprach- und Sozialforschung
  9. ↑
  10. ↑ Extremismus & Demokratie 99/253
  11. ↑ Anne Fuchs; Mary Cosgrove; Georg Grote (2006). German Memory Contests: The Quest for Identity in Literature, Film, and Discourse Since 1990. Camden House. p. 283. ISBN 978-1-57113-324-3.
  12. ↑ cf. Verfassungsschutzbericht 2005, p. 124f
  13. ↑ BNR Ausgabe 23/1996: Anti-Antifaschismus als Mission: Der Feind steht links (Archive, restricted); ARD-„Panorama“, 28 October 1996
  14. ↑ BNR, Meldungen 12/07: „Junge Freiheit“ muss Falschangaben unterlassen (restricted access)

External links

Texte von Maegerle
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