Bernie Sanders supporters are bombarding Elizabeth Warren’s social media accounts with snakes emojis, memes, and GIFs in a ramp-up of the tension that’s been brewing between the two campaigns over the past week.

The barrage of emojis, which are often used by stans of pop stars in the comment sections of someone they’re feuding with (Taylor Swift vs. Calvin Harris or Taylor Swift vs. Kim Kardashian and Kanye West), has boiled over as supporters of both Warren and Sanders have escalated a proxy battle online as the candidates have disagreed over the characterization of a private 2018 meeting where Warren claims Sanders told her a woman couldn’t win the 2020 election, which Sanders vehemently denies. Sanders supporters have called Warren a “backstabber” and a “snake” for reiterating the claim during the debate Tuesday night.

Even as the Warren and Sanders campaigns attempted to move on from the story that caused a rift between their campaigns by easing tensions in group direct messages with prominent followers and again on the debate stage, supporters of the candidates have been warring over their relationship.

The fight between Warren and Sanders supporters has always seemed inevitable. On various platforms, leftists and Sanders supporters have criticized Warren for being a capitalist and for her health care plan, which they see as her campaign backing away from a commitment to Medicare for All. Democratic Socialists of America, which launched its own independent campaign for Sanders, told BuzzFeed News in September that it wasn’t ruling out the idea of distributing materials to canvassers pointing out the differences between the two candidates.

In the lead-up to the debate, Sanders supporters trended a #RefundWarren hashtag demanding refunds from the candidate through ActBlue, the Democratic-aligned fundraising platform, and posted screenshots of emails claiming ActBlue was “experiencing high volumes” of refund requests from Sanders supporters who’d donated to Warren.

