Steven Van Zandt Is Bruce Springsteen’s Guitarist. He Hates You. He Wants You Dead.

Steven Van Zandt is a longtime guitarist with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. He also played Silvio Dante in The Sopranos, as well as a number of other mobsters. Apparently, he has taken both Springsteen’s fanatical and unreflective Leftism and mob thuggishness deeply to heart and combined the two together; on Sunday, he tweeted a call to “Exterminate the (Republican) cockroaches.” He quickly deleted the tweet, but not because he thought better of it; in fact, he doubled down in a series of angry rants that demonstrated once again the ugly, hate-filled heart of the authoritarian Left.

Van Zandt’s additional tweets are gone now as well, after Breitbart published them in an article on Monday morning. What remains on Van Zandt’s Twitter feed, however, makes it abundantly clear that he is a classic case of one’s self-image not even coming close to matching reality. His account is full to a sickening degree of angry, expletive-filled invective against patriots.

Even before Van Zandt’s initial extermination tweet, on Friday one Twitter user asked him, “Why do you fill yourself with so much hate?” Van Zandt replied, “You talking to me? You can’t be talking to me! I’m the Love Man. I’m a peace loving ‘60s hippie. I’ve got nothing but love for the world!” Sure. He just wants people who love America and hold to traditional values to get out of his world.

The same Twitter user came back to Van Zandt’s “You talking to me?” with, “Yes, no other name was mentioned. That’s obviously a lie. It’s not words that count, but actions.” An enraged Van Zandt responded, “Really? Why don’t you list my hateful ‘actions’ Foxsucker before I disappear you out of my sight forever in a very peaceful loving way.”

Then on Sunday, Van Zandt waded into the Tennessee insurrection/gun ban controversy, denouncing “Republican White Supremicist scumbag cowards and pussies that need guns to feel like real men.” After he deleted his extermination tweet, he emphasized that he was not doing so because the old hippie had decided to show more peace and love to the world. He did so, he tweeted, “To avoid spending half my day deleting Foxsucking scumbag Russian bots and MAGOTT cockroaches like you! Go take away some women’s rights, keep some Black people from voting, go harass a Trans event, go shoot some kids, do what Republicans do best and get the f**k outta my feed!” He ended up deleting this one as well, showing that this dimwitted clown is at least to some degree capable of embarrassment, but his Twitter feed is still hair-raising.

Van Zandt’s tweets, in fact, are an intriguing glimpse into the mind of an unthinking Leftist who is utterly lacking in any ability to evaluate his own words and deeds with any degree of honesty, and who is quick to accuse others of what he himself is guilty of doing. Someone else wrote to Van Zandt, “I remember when family members, friends and acquaintances with opposing political convictions could converse without the vitriol. What happened and why?” He answered, “Newt Gingrich happened. Rupert Murdoch happened.” Yeah, sure, it’s their fault. The Left was all love beads and lava lamps until they came along.

Van Zandt has, of course, said nary a word about Kathy Griffin holding Trump’s bloody severed head, or Madonna saying she wanted to blow up the White House, or Robert DeNiro saying he wanted to punch Trump in the face, or Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, and Kamala Harris inciting Leftist violence.

Related: Left-Wing Violence Chic

Yet despite his double standard and eye-popping hate, Little Steven no doubt still thinks of himself as a decent fellow. Those who want large numbers of people dead often do. Nazi genocide mastermind Heinrich Himmler once told a group of SS leaders, “Most of you know what it means to see a hundred corpses lying together, five hundred, or a thousand. To have gone through this and yet — apart from a few exceptions, examples of human weakness — to have remained decent fellows, this is what has made us hard.”

Steven Van Zandt, who is secure in the conviction that he is on the other side of the National Socialists (although he is wrong about that), would be horrified and no doubt driven to new heights of rage and invective to see himself compared to Heinrich Himmler. But it’s not an idle comparison. Himmler’s reduction of those he hated to the status of vermin — or “cockroaches,” as Van Zandt put it — was the indispensable prerequisite for his genocide. Steven Van Zandt, without realizing it, is helping pave the way for Leftists who are more ruthless and consistent than he is, but who share his core assumptions about the world.