The field director for Queens Councilwoman Vickie Paladino’s reelection campaign has a history of thumbing out inflammatory messages on social media, but the campaign is downplaying the vitriol and sticking by the young operative.
The insensitive posts from the Paladino staffer, Mario Nicoletto, include an Instagram story he shared last month referencing a white supremacist slogan, according to screengrabs obtained by the Daily News. On Twitter, Nicoletto has shared posts from a prominent neo-Nazi.
Nicoletto, a Suffolk County resident who used to work for embattled Queens/Long Island Rep. George Santos, was hired as Paladino’s field director in the past month to “help organize volunteers” in the final lead-up to her competitive Nov. 7 race against Democratic challenger Tony Avella, according to Thomas Paladino, the GOP Council member’s son and spokesman.
The Paladino son confirmed the authenticity of the Nicoletto posts reviewed by The News. He said Wednesday his mother did not know of the posts before her campaign hired him.
But he argued they are innocuous, and said the campaign is not removing Nicoletto from his role.
“We have no tolerance for anti-Semitic or anti-Asian hatred of any kind,” he said. “But what you provided was, at worst, dumb internet banter by a young kid. If it were otherwise, he would have been fired immediately and without hesitation.”
Paladino is no stranger to controversy.
An ardent Trump supporter and one of the Council’s most right-leaning members, Paladino previously found herself in hot water after Gothamist reported her unsuccessful 2018 state Senate campaign courted support from the Proud Boys, which took part in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, as well as neo-Nazis. More recently, the Council removed Paladino from its Committee on Mental Health, Disabilities, and Addiction in response to her inflammatory rhetoric directed at the transgender community.
Nicoletto, who identified himself as 22 years old in a February interview about his decision to resign from his post in Santos’ district office, did not return requests for comment this week.
Nicoletto’s Instagram handle is set to private, meaning only pre-approved followers can view it.
A source provided The News with a screengrab of an Instagram story Nicoletto posted last month of a meme lifted from a discussion forum on 4Chan, a platform infamous for peddling far-right extremism.
The meme shared by Nicoletto features an unidentified man standing on a digital scale that reads “1488.”
According to the Anti-Defamation League, “1488” is a numerical phrase popular among white supremacists. The “14” refers to “The 14 Words,” a racist slogan, while the “88” is code for “Heil Hitler,” with H being the eighth letter of the alphabet, says the ADL, which researches far-right groups and beliefs.
“Together, the numbers form a general endorsement of white supremacy and its beliefs,” an ADL blog post states. “As such, they are ubiquitous within the white supremacist movement — as graffiti, in graphics and tattoos, even in screen names and e-mail addresses … Some white supremacists will even price racist merchandise, such as t-shirts or compact discs, for $14.88.”
Thomas Paladino wouldn’t comment on why Nicoletto shared a meme from 4Chan. Of “1488,” Paladino said he has “no idea what that reference means.”
On Twitter, Nicoletto has in recent years posted a number of insensitive messages via a handle he no longer uses, but which he still refers to as his own on his LinkTree website account. Screengrabs of those now unavailable tweets were shared by the same source, and The News was able to corroborate their authenticity via the Wayback Machine, which archives internet activity.
In a tweet from July 2020, Nicoletto wrote, “Guess I’m racist then,” in response to a post accusing those who supported then-President Donald Trump of espousing racist beliefs, a screengrab shows.
That same month, as hate crimes against Asian-Americans were on the rise amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Nicoletto tweeted, “No,” in response to a message urging people to “stop calling COVID-19 the China Virus and encouraging white supremacists to beat my Asian American brothers and sisters.”
In other tweets from 2020, Nicoletto referred to COVID-19 as the “China Virus” and called Florida school shooting survivor David Hogg a “crisis actor,” according to the cache of screengrabs obtained by The News.
In November 2020, Nicoletto retweeted a post that featured a photo of Nick Fuentes, an avowed neo-Nazi, along with the caption: “This Is America.” A few months later, Nicoletto retweeted a May 2021 post from Fuentes expressing anti-Israel sentiments, a screenshot shows.
Avella, who used to represent Paladino’s 19th Council District, which includes Whitestone, Bayside and other eastern Queens neighborhoods, voiced anger over her decision to keep Nicoletto on her campaign amid the social media revelations.
“At a time when disturbing hate crimes continue to rise against Jews and Asians, it is disgraceful that Vickie Paladino’s senior campaign staff member is a virulent white supremacist,” Avella said. “This is yet another example of a troubling trend in which Paladino consistently surrounds herself with people with ties to extremist far right groups such as the Proud Boys.”
Thomas Paladino pushed back against Avella’s Nicoletto-related rebuke and said he should focus on addressing his connections to a campaign donor who was recently accused of making anti-Semitic social media posts about the Israel-Hamas war.
“Mario is a young guy who organizes volunteers; I’m much more concerned with the fact that Tony Avella’s longtime aide has been posting Hitler speeches and Hamas kidnapping videos openly on his Facebook page without any action being taken,” Paladino said, referring to Chaudhry Anwar, an Avella donor who reportedly posted a Facebook message last month in reference to the war featuring a photo of Adolf Hitler with heart emojis.
Anwar is not employed by the Avella team, according to his campaign manager, Dave Fischer.
In a statement, Avella also claimed “Anwar insists that his Facebook page was hacked and he did not make any of these terrible posts.”
“I’ve known Anwar for many years, and he has never professed any anti-Semitic views,” he said. “Obviously, I vehemently reject any bigotry in all forms as I have done my entire career.”