Anthony Fantano's 'The Needle Drop' channel is one of YouTube's most popular music vlogs

Popular music vlogger Anthony Fantano – best known for his YouTube channel The Needle Drop – has been accused of promoting alt-right sentiment on a separate, lesser-known channel.

Fantano’s eminently popular The Needle Drop channel regularly posts album reviews on YouTube, and has gained over 1.1 million subscribers and 260+ million views since its launch in 2007.

Now, the vlogger has been accused of ‘pandering’ to the alt-right on a lesser-known side channel. As The Fader reports, Fantano’s side-channel thatistheplan is centred on language typically associated with the far-right movement, with videos titled “pepe the frog triggers hillary clinton,” “I CHANGED MY GENDER CUZ DONALD TRUMP,” and “MEGA-CUCK SAYS POKEMON GO IS LIKE DOGFIGHTING” gaining Fantano’s secret second account over 400,000 subscribers. His videos also targets ‘SJWs’ and feminists, and repeatedly belittle the work of black musicians.

The Fader also report that, as of yesterday (October 3), Fantano has deleted all videos off thatistheplan, replacing it instead with a 30-second clip of YouTube’s monetisation logo in protest to the site’s ban on profit-making from inappropriate videos. As Fader writer Ezra Marcus states: “With the content offline, the discussion moves away from content to center [sic] around free speech and the rights of creators. It’s a savvy move.”

Fantano reportedly deleted the entire channel after being approached for comment by The Fader. “i’m a youtuber, so i’m going to respond to it in a video,” he later Tweeted after being questioned on his lack of response.

Back in 2015, Fantano’s image was mistakenly used in a report on a mass shooter, in a news report following a terrorist incident.

Addressing the matter, Fantano said in a YouTube video: “The person who has been named as the shooter I guess has a short haircut, glasses, round head and is on the internet [so] that is enough to draw a visual comparison between two people.”

He added: “So, of course, the internet having the dark sense of humour that is does says that I look like this guy, which is – in my opinion – not something to be joking about… [but] it’s to be expected…”

However, Fantano was less forgiving of Australian news channel SBS’ mistake, continuing: “I can’t believe it didn’t dawn on these people to do a reverse image search or even think that it was strange that I had a record collection behind me or that I don’t even look that much like the guy they were posting photos of until that point. I think it just says a lot about the current state of journalism, I guess.”