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.
[5] Maegerle also collects information on right-wing extremist, xenophobic and anti-semitic acts of violence, regularly publishing chronicles of such events.
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.
[7] Some New Right publishers 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.
[8] For example, Maegerle defends the use of political correctness, and published an article in the left-wing newspaper Jungle World during the 2002 German federal election in which he, as a SPD member, accused CDU chancellor candidate Edmund Stoiber of having "best ties to the twilight zone of right-wing extremism".
[9][10] The extremism researcher Eckhard Jesse has criticized Maegerle for "scent[ing] in the well-known Antifa manner almost everywhere right-wing extremists.