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Eagles of Death Metal frontman calls Parkland shooting survivors 'vile abusers'

Rocker Jesse Hughes also used social media to criticize Parkland student leader Emma Gonzalez as "the awful face of treason" and a "survivor of nothing."
Image: Jesse Hughes with the Eagles of Death Metal
Jesse Hughes with the Eagles of Death Metal performs in Sacramento, California, on Oct. 21, 2017.Miikka Skaffari / FilmMagic, via Getty Images

Eagles of Death Metal frontman Jesse Hughes has branded the March for Our Lives protesters "pathetic" and ripped the survivors as "vile abusers of the dead."

"As the survivor of a mass shooting I can tell you from firsthand experience that all of you protesting and taking days off from school insult the memory of those who were killed," Hughes, who lived through the 2015 Paris terror attack, wrote in a spate of Instagram posts over the weekend.

In one of three that the 45-year-old musician later deleted, Hughes posted a doctored photo of protest leader Emma González tearing apart a copy of the Constitution and called her, among other things, "the awful face of treason" and a "survivor of nothing."

Phillip Picardi, chief content officer of Teen Vogue, tweeted side-by-side images of González, who appeared on the digital cover of the magazine this month. At left is an image of González tearing apart a shooting range target; at right the doctored image of González tearing apart the Constitution.

González was among the hundreds of students who ran for their lives on Feb. 14 when a former classmate armed with an AR-15 rifle went on a rampage at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and killed 17.

In a separate posting, Hughes displayed a cartoon in which a woman says she turned her gun in to "do my part in ending violence" and a man replies that he cut off his penis "to stop rape."

And in another that has since disappeared from his social media, Hughes posted a drawing of a medicine bottle on which it says "Pills That Are Hard to Swallow" and a hand holding three pills.

Arrows pointing to the pills say "Our guns aren't going anywhere," "There are only 2 genders," and "Donald Trump will be your president for 7 more years," according to the blog Consequence of Sound.

The Instagram tirade appeared after legions of people across the United States and around the world rallied for gun control — many of them young people fed up with inaction by Congress on gun control and adamantly opposed to the National Rifle Association.

In Washington alone, there were an estimated 800,000 protesters — apparently more than attended Trump's inauguration last year.

Related: Bataclan victims' families mourn two years after Paris attacks

Hughes and his band were onstage at the Bataclan theater in Paris in November 2015 when terrorists claiming allegiance to ISIS launched a series of coordinated attacks that left 130 dead — 89 of them at the concert.

Afterward, Hughes claimed that France's tough gun restrictions aided the terrorists.