A man high in the stands behind Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) during his Thursday night campaign rally in Phoenix surprised the crowd by unfurling a large red flag emblazoned with a swastika.
Sanders was alerted to the flag when the cheers at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum turned to boos shortly after he began speaking.
He turned around after a supporter had grabbed the flag from below and yanked it from the man, who was then escorted out.
“Whoever it was, I think they’re a little outnumbered tonight,” Sanders told the crowd.
While rally disruptions are not uncommon ― a group of vegan protesters memorably rushed the stage at a Joe Biden rally earlier this week ― attendees seemed particularly taken aback by the swastika.
“I was expecting Trump supporters to be protesting. I didn’t expect a swastika flag to be unfurled,” rally attendee Orlando Garrido told The Washington Post. “I never thought I would actually see something like that.”
Others on social media pointed out that Sanders, a Jewish man, had family who were murdered by Nazis in the Holocaust, making the swastika flag’s sudden appearance particularly repugnant.
Video of a man being escorted out of the stadium while using a racial slur also emerged on social media describing him as the same man with the flag.
A spokesman for the Sanders campaign told a BuzzFeed News reporter that the senator “is aware of the flag with the swastika on it and is disturbed by it.”