Proud Boys call Gov. Andrew Cuomo ‘Fredo’ in banner
Right-wing agitator group the Proud Boys plastered New York City with banners promoting their controversial club on Sunday morning — prompting outrage from Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who was labeled “Fredo” by one posting.
The banners were hung from various Big Apple crossings — including the Queens Midtown, Lincoln, Holland and Brooklyn Battery tunnels and the Manhattan Bridge — with defiant messages including “no retreat!” and “no surrender.”
One posted above the Queens-Midtown Tunnel called Cuomo “Fredo” — an apparent reference to Fredo Corleone, the ineffective son of Vito Corleone in “The Godfather.”
The governor’s brother, Chris Cuomo, was filmed going berserk when a man called him Fredo on Shelter Island in August. It was unclear whether the Proud Boys were now likening the governor to the character or if they had simply gotten mixed up.
“New York is not intimidated or threatened by these neo-fascists,” Gov. Cuomo said in a statement on Sunday afternoon.
“I have a message for the ‘Bigot Boys’ who skulk around like cowards in the dead of night: when you preach hate and division, New York answers with love and unity. Crawl back into your hole, Bigot Boys — there’s no place for hate in our state,” he said, adding the messages also contained “anti-Italian American stereotypes.”
An investigation into the banners is ongoing. The protest comes one day after a clash between 25 far-right Proud Boys and hundreds of Antifa protesters in Manhattan on Saturday.
The group had planned a rally to protest the sentencing of two of their members who were slapped with four years in prison last month for pummeling Antifa members during a 2018 brawl on the Upper East Side.
The Proud Boys, which does not accept female members and has been deemed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, calls for abolishing prison, ending welfare, giving everyone a gun and shutting down the government.
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