YouTube music critic and ‘The Needle Drop’ host Anthony Fantano will be saying home this month — but not by choice.
In the sometimes insular circles of YouTube, Anthony Fantano is a superstar. Technically, he’s one of the biggest music critics in the world: his channel, ‘The Needle Drop,’ has more than 1.1 million followers. That success is fueled by an energetic charisma and pronounced opinions.
But some of those opinions have been called into question. Just recently, a lengthy piece in The Fader accused Fantano of being racist, sexist, and hardcore alt-right. In fact, the magazine accused Fantano of covertly developing a YouTube channel geared towards an extreme, alt-right audience.
Specifically, the article focused on Fantano’s separate, offshoot channel on YouTube, called ‘thatistheplan’. Politic opinion and discourse are the main topics in the offshoot.
The Fader went straight for the jugular.
The article accuses Fantano of ‘pandering to the alt-right’ though this side channel, while blasting racist, sexist and violent rhetoric throughout.
But it’s not clear all of that criticism quite fits. In a video about rapper Hopsin (titled ‘Hopsin Is the Greatest Rapper’), Fantano is mostly ripping on bad lyrics and reading them aloud. It’s all about exposing the absurdity with outlandish gestures and images.
But the Fader piece casts the video in far more extreme tones. And, offers some obvious mischaracterizations. It sort of feels like your mother walking into a raunchy comedic routine.
The rest is hard to judge, simply because Fantano destroyed all the evidence. According to the Fader piece, the vlogger erased almost everything in the ‘thatistheplan’ channel, citing problems with YouTube. Just recently, YouTube triggered a major change in its monetization policy, effectively yanking ads for controversial channels.
The move puts Fantano into a guilty light. After all, why didn’t Fantano defend his work instead of deleting it?
The Fader author Ezra Marcus says Fantano wiped the channel avoid the bad press. “He deleted the entire channel when we asked for comment about why it was so bad,” Marcus said.
“With the content offline, the discussion moves away from content to center around free speech and the rights of creators. It’s a savvy move.”
Personally, I don’t have much to go on. Fader’s attack on the Hopsin video seems weak, though the rest is unfortunately inaccessible to me. Perhaps those videos would shock me; maybe it’s all benign opinion.
Either way, the Fader piece has forced cancellations of all upcoming Fantano tour dates.
“Shows in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Boston have been cancelled without comment from promoters,” Noisey reports. “But Popgun Presents, who were promoting Fantano’s October 28 show at Murmrr Theatre in Brooklyn, NY, indicated that the cancellation was linked to the fallout from The Fader’s article.”
It’s all bad news for Fantano. For starters, tours are expensive, and clubs don’t pay for canceled gigs. That leaves lots of airline tickets, hotels, and a myriad of other expenses. Some refundable, some not.
Meanwhile, Fantano has responded.
“I defend myself against a recent hitjob in The Fader claiming I knowingly pandered to the alt-right with my now defunct meme channel, thatistheplan,” the video description reads.
So far, Fader is standing its ground.
More as this develops!
I don’t get how you can write this with a neutral standpoint. If we were in the UK, he could’ve already sued Fader for libel.
He didnt delete it, youtube terminated his account and I believe they took his ad revenue before he encountered the artical by fader
I was thinking the same thing.
The Fader piece is, honestly, all over the place, so you’d have to pick apart the actual accusations. A lot of it accuses Fantano of harboring opinions and attitudes that are completely legal, though you may violently disagree with them. So, he’s not been accused of rape or murder, for example.
That said, venues canceled, but the core question is why they canceled. Can you cancel a performer because of alt right leanings? Perhaps, based on the contract(s).
So there’s a lot to pick through here. Is this defamation? Depends on what’s being alleged. Do the venues have a legal right to cancel? Most likely, though that also depends on contracts. It could be that they don’t want the association — maybe that’s fine. You can say a lot under US law, but of course anyone can react the way they want, too.
Its terrible how they slandered the needle drop like that. after reviewing the piece and having seen some of his work in the past, i am utterly disgusted that this “journalist” has gotten away with this so far. I really hope they go out of business and I will not support fader anytime soon. I hope anthony gets paid back in some way.
I really hope the Fader gets hurt by their idiocy. I’m betting Fantano has more fans than The Fader does. He needs to activate them and go after Fader. It’s time for the victims of “racist” smears to start fighting back against the establishment-Left responsible for creating all of the racial animosity in America.
But yet, the degenerate BLM is fashionable to support.
The virtue signalling Left think they are being courageous and edgy, but time will reveal all.
Politics and group-think in the arts will ruin them and no one will benefit.
You’re adding credence to the Fader’s piece on Anthony being alt-right with your response. Really, it’s his fans fault for this, at least partially.
How is a random fan adding any credence to the (now taken down) hitpiece? Let alone connecting him to the alt-right (disliking liberals does not qualify you as such, contrary to popular belief). Fantano himself doesn’t encourage mentalities such as theirs. They’re ultimately responsible for their actions and what they say. It’s like saying video games or movies make people violent when said people act on their urges. Being in the alt-right doesn’t prevent you from enjoying basic things such as, I dunno, enjoying watching a music reviewer on YouTube.
What if i told you that both the left and right are toxic and worthless, and youre a brainwashed piece of trash if you support either side? And what if i told you youre still a racist for ignoring your white privilege and failing to understand why black people do not matter to society, and why a movement such as BLM only needs exists because of vapid, ignorant white people like you?