Last night, the Republican party held the second of its presidential primary debates. Some candidates and commentators used the opportunity to discuss immigration. Others focused on foreign policy. And then there was Ann Coulter, the controversial conservative pundit, who chose to complain about the Jews.

As the candidates made their closing remarks about how the world and country would be different if they were president, Coulter began harping on their mentions of the Jewish state:

(Fortunately, Coulter censored her language in that last tweet, to avoid causing any offense.)

Now, informed people understand that the reason Republican candidates mention Israel in their stump speeches is because Republican voters–and many other Americans–really care about Israel: gallupisraelrepubdems2015 Unsurprisingly, it is not the 2 percent of Americans who are Jews—and overwhelmingly vote Democratic—who are the targets of Republican campaign rhetoric, but the 98 percent of Americans who are not. And to be fair, Coulter crudely stumbled towards this point in a subsequent tweet:

But she soon walked back even that bare level of belated nuance:

(In fact, Evangelicals are one of the Republican party’s largest voting blocs, something any serious conservative commentator would know.)

Naturally, all of this was completely lost on Coulter’s online defenders, a motley crew of white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other assorted anti-Semites who immediately launched the hashtag #IStandWithAnn, which quickly began trending on Twitter.

Tellingly, many of the slurs deployed against Jews by these far-right anti-Semites perfectly mirrored those recently deployed by far-left bigots during the debate over the Iran deal. Both accused American Jews of disloyalty, and of placing their own interests above those of the country. For instance:

The #IStandWithAnn episode thus serves as a reminder that anti-Semitism, though discredited, is (a) far from a dormant force in American life, and (b) not the exclusive province of either the left or the right, but a dangerous ideology with cross-partisan appeal.

Previous: Your Daily Dose of Anti-Semitism on Twitter





Yair Rosenberg is a senior writer at Tablet. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

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