Congratulating Capital on Taking Control From The People

Anthony Fantano and the Left’s Habit of Applauding Corporate Control

Fantano preparing to audition for a sequel to 2003’s Elf, just in case they do it

Anthony Fantano recently praised Bandcamp for banning generative AI music. he framed the decision as an ethical win, a refreshing act of responsibility in a cultural landscape supposedly being overrun by unlabeled, contextless machine output.

But what’s actually being celebrated in that moment is not artists gaining power or people collectively setting norms. It’s a platform, owned by capital, asserting authority over cultural production and being openly thanked by a so-very-leftist music critic for doing so.

When a corporate Terms of Service update is treated as a moral victory, what’s really being endorsed is the idea that capital should decide which tools are legitimate, which processes are acceptable, and which kinds of labor are allowed to exist.

Conventional knowledge says that this should be a non-starter for anyone who claims to be “leftist” or critical of capital. Not because “AI art is good,” or because taste doesn’t matter, but because once you accept that a corporation has the authority to define legitimacy in art, you are no longer arguing about aesthetics or ethics, you are praising managerial control over culture (and teaching people that they should, too).

Applauding capital for asserting control, even when it targets something you personally dislike, you’d think shouldn’t be a left position at all, (though I argue “left” is a bourgeois ideology and that if you want what the “left” claims to, we need to abandon Direction Brain).

That applause is a huge mistake, and the explanation it warrants is brief.

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Celebrating Our Domination

Bandcamp is posting a dub because today in a new announcement the platform has formalized in its TOS that they are not allowing generative AI music on the site. They even expressed a wish not to just limit wholly generated AI music but mostly generated AI music too. Which is refreshing news considering that there is currently a new AI artist that is making waves on Spotify and even got shared in a recent Instagram post from Selena Gomez. It’s just crazy how much of this stuff is getting slipped in front of people’s eyes and ears with no label, no context whatsoever. So all the more reason to come out and very vocally support a platform like Bandcamp when they make decisions like this.

- Anthony Fantano

So… Why do I want a corporation to decide this for me?

That is the question that should immediately follow someone saying “we should vocally support a corporation,” especially someone who has affiliated themselves with “The Left.” The question of whether “AI art” is good isn’t relevant, nor is another new “organic” label for NGOs to use to sell companies on writing off their production as “ethical.” Why am I supposed to cheer on a corporation asserting authority over culture?

Because that is specifically what is happening here! A company updates its Terms of Service, and it’s framed as a moral victory. Not as a regrettable compromise. Not as a risky consolidation of power. As a win, something to be vocally supported.

Once you accept that framing, it no longer matters what is being restricted (as long as we aren’t talking about CSAM, anyhow). It no longer matters whether you personally like the art, distrust the tool, or find the outputs annoying. The core move has already been made: authority over culture has been handed upward, and the audience has been trained to applaud the transfer.

The justification is always familiar: people might be misled, context is missing, this feels wrong, something needs to be done.

However, when capital is delegated the role of problem solver, it has (what should be obvious) implications: consenting to corporations determining what art is acceptable is to endorse a system in which culture is imposed from above. You know, one of the things leftists supposedly fight against?

Disliking an art form does not make that transfer of authority progressive. Finding something annoying, uncanny, or aesthetically empty does not justify consolidating control in the hands of capital. Those are questions of taste, not power—and confusing the two is how cultural governance quietly expands.

This is why the celebration matters more than the ban itself. Bans come and go. Tools change. Targets shift. But the habit of applauding corporate authority when it aligns with our preferences is how people are taught to accept control as care.

Once that habit is in place, the question is no longer “should this be allowed?”
It becomes “who gets to decide?”

And if your answer is a platform, then the argument is already lost.

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Conclusion

If this argument feels familiar, it’s because it isn’t limited to music, AI, or Bandcamp (nor was it limited to Photoshop, the camera, or the printing press). This same reflex (applauding authority when it wears the right moral costume) is exactly what I examine in my documentaries. Like in Horseshoe Theory is Right (But Not How You Think), I give a qualitative class-based reason for why the supposedly opposed directional political camps converge around managerial control, censorship, and the US state’s dominance, the moment it feels emotionally justified.

It’s also central to You Misunderstood Both Joker Movies, which looks at how institutional power absorbs dissent by reframing discomfort as danger and rebellion as something that must be supervised, labeled, and neutralized — always in the name of protection.

In every situation, the pattern remains consistent: while discomfort is certainly real, the suggested solution is capital’s authority. People are not only encouraged to accept this arrangement but are also made to feel good about it, as if it's something to be celebrated.

If you cheer when a corporation controls what exists, the issue isn't art's quality or production method, but why you are so happy a company is making decisions about what you are allowed to do.

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