The crackdown also comes as authorities — in Germany and elsewhere — grapple with the role of digital communication in motivating extremism and stoking violence. After a demonstration by white nationalists in Charlottesville descended into deadly chaos, Internet hosting companies have come under pressure to scrap far-right platforms such as Daily Stormer and Vanguard America.

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Internet watchdog groups in Germany have warned that far-right websites are growing in popularity — and the government shut down one such forum, "Altermedia Deutschland," last year — but Friday’s action was the first aimed at the left.

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The website linksunten.indymedia.org was taken offline for “sowing hate against different opinions and state officials,” the interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, told reporters.

He said treating the portal, founded in 2009 and currently operated by seven administrators, as an “association” instead of a media outlet meant constitutional protections for free expression were less firm. The German Constitution, approved in 1949, codifies the right to free assembly and peaceful demonstration, but postwar statute also criminalizes incitement to hatred against segments of the population. The site, de Maizière said, "runs counter to the criminal code."

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Police in southwest Germany searched properties associated with the site’s management, according to Thomas Strobl, interior minister of the state of Baden-Württemberg. Both he and de Maizière are members of the ruling Christian Democratic Union, led by Chancellor Angela Merkel.

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Authorities seized laptops and weapons such as knives and pipes during the raids, according to German broadcaster ARD.

The website has been a destination for leftists of many stripes — anarchists and squatters, anti-capitalists and antifascists, opponents of the police and of critics of borders. It served as a log of opportunities for direct action and celebrated protests and other forms of interference. It also tracked opposing forces.

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“Every day, thousands of leftists visit the website to inform themselves of all aspects of antagonistic trends,” read the site’s description. In June, a claim of responsibility by G-20 activists for arson attacks on German rail services appeared on the site.

German media reported that a series of anonymous threats to police — labeled as “pigs” and “bulls” by commentators — had led officials to disarm the online forum.

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According to Germany's 2016 Report on the Protection of the Constitution, the number of left-wing extremists climbed last year, rising to 28,500 — the highest figure since 2012. It said the number of right-wing extremists was 23,100, about one-quarter of whom were neo-Nazis.

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"To raise their profile," the report stated, left-wing extremists have "for years been stepping up their use of independent Internet platforms such as "linksunten.indymedia" in addition to the use of social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. The platform has become the most important medium used by violence-oriented left-wing extremists."

The German newspaper Die Welt reported that the domestic security agency has for years sought the identities of the website's administrators but found the veil of anonymity too thick.