Recent Fader article misses the point
Anthony Fantano, self-proclaimed “Internet’s Busiest Music Nerd,” is facing backlash after a new article on The Fader linked him to the alt-right. Fantano created his primary YouTube channel, The Needle Drop, back in 2009. The channel features video reviews of albums and tracks of various genres, and has over 1.1 million subscribers, thanks to his consistent output and sharply edited videos.
Along with The Needle Drop, Fantano had a comedy channel titled thatistheplan. Originally a small space for music covers, opinions, and advice, thatistheplan gained a larger audience when Fantano started a series titled “The Meme Review.” As time went on, thatistheplan included parody videos making fun of rappers, like XXXTentacion and Hopsin, and their fan bases. On Oct. 3, Fantano shut it down with the complaint, common among many YouTubers, that YouTube was demonetizing all his latest uploads.
That same day, The Fader released an article titled “The Needle Drop pioneered music review vlogs. His lesser-known channel pandered to the alt-right.” The article, written by Ezra Marcus, calls out Fantano’s use of memes from r/BlackPeopleTwitter and anti-social justice videos, which are clear parodies, as attempts to create a fandom within the alt-right movement.Marcus goes out of his way to make Fantano look like a racist, mentioning images of violence against black people and memes including the N-word that appear throughout Fantano’s videos.Most of these images are memes, including “deep-fried memes,” which came from Black Twitter, according to Know Your Meme. Many of these images circulate widely on social media among black people as much as they do with white people.
The article also mentions a couple of episodes of The Needle Drop Podcast featuring Sargon of Akkad and Sam Hyde. Sargon of Akkad is the name used by a U.K. YouTuber who describes himself as a “classic liberal.” His views are strictly anti-feminist and anti-social activist, and he has written some disgusting things on social media in response to women receiving rape threats. The article claims Fantano agrees with Sargon’s views, citing how, in the podcast, Fantano refers to activists’ efforts to ban Tyler, The Creator from various countries for his violent lyrics.
Fantano’s views on this matter are much more sophisticated than The Fader indicates. On his main channel, Fantano relates the issue to free speech and racial double-standards, and requests evidence of lyrics causing violence.
Sam Hyde is a former television personality with strong associations to the alt-right. He has made racist comments and has donated to foundations supporting neo-Nazis. On the podcast, he made very vulgar and violent comments about how he would react to Lena Dunham physically attacking him. To me, this part of the article is the only portion that holds some weight.Even then, Fantano is a believer in free speech, not part of the alt-right. While the comments from both guests were very disturbing and uncomfortable to hear, Marcus’ article takes them out of context.
Context seems to be something that’s missing from most of Marcus’ article. Marcus mentions that Fantano uses anti-feminist, anti-social justice, and anti-liberal jokes to get laughs. What the article fails to mention is that the channel had an equally large number of videos parodying capitalists, conservatives, and communists.
Since the article was published, it has been spread widely across the internet. Many fans of Fantano on Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter were quick to call out the article and its author for spreading false information. Marcus received a tremendous amount of backlash on Twitter, including anti-semitic tweets directed at him, and has since made his account private.
Three days after the release of the article, Fantano published a 21-minute long response to the article on his main channel. In this response, he addressed each section of the article with his own perspective on the issue. He defended most claims with ease, while his responses to the Hyde and Sargon of Akkad podcast episodes were a bit weaker. Overall, it was made quite clear that Fantano is not a part of the alt-right, and he does not pander to it.
Vince Staples, a popular rapper, called out Anthony Fantano on Twitter after Fantano responded to an argument Staples was having with another artist.
Unfortunately, the culture of reading headlines and not reading beyond the title is as popular as ever, and because of this, the damage may already have been done.
Photo courtesy of Anthony Fontana; edited by Alora Griffiths/The Ontarion