In one of the scariest moments in modern history, we're doing our best at ScheerPost to pierce the fog of lies that conceal it but we need some help to pay our writers and staff. Please consider a tax-deductible donation.
As the U.S. drifts deeper into an era shaped by concentrated wealth, surveillance technology, and political strongmen, Robert Scheer sits down with Jonathan Taplin to examine what he calls the rise of “techno‑authoritarianism.” Drawing on decades at the intersection of culture, media, and technology—from producing Bob Dylan and The Band to directing USC’s Annenberg Innovation Lab—Taplin traces how corporate monopolies, AI, and political intimidation have hollowed out the counterculture that once challenged American power. In this wide‑ranging conversation, Scheer and Taplin explore the collapse of artistic independence, the fusion of Big Tech and state authority, and the dangers facing a generation coming of age under unprecedented surveillance and economic inequality.
Click to subscribe on: Apple / Spotify / Amazon
Hybrid Transcript — Scheer Intelligence with Jonathan Taplin
Techno‑Authoritarianism, Counterculture, and the Crisis of American Power
Robert Scheer: This is Robert Scheer with another edition of Scheer Intelligence. I used to do this show for KCRW, the NPR station in Santa Monica — a great station — but one of the casualties of the Trump era is that NPR is not what it once was. They’re nervous now, though they still try to do good work.
Today’s conversation goes straight to a question I’ve been wrestling with: How do you preserve a counterculture? How do you keep an independent voice alive in an age I’ve started calling “techno‑fascism” — the merger of digital technology with an authoritarian impulse? By that I mean a system that suppresses challenges to monopoly capitalism, whether in the U.S., China’s hybrid of communism and billionaire culture, or Putin’s Russia.
We’re living in a moment where authoritarianism is dressed up as modernity — trendy, efficient, profitable. Maybe it’s only a moment; maybe it will pass. A Supreme Court decision today finally challenged Trump, so perhaps the separation of powers still has some life in it. But that’s not our main subject. What we’re really talking about is how culture moves history — and how mass media shapes political consciousness.
Our guest, Jonathan Taplin, has spent his life exploring that intersection. He first became known as the producer for Bob Dylan and The Band, and later had a legendary career across film, music, and media. I got to know him at USC’s Annenberg School, where he ran the Innovation Lab and was one of the few people capable of bridging serious liberal‑arts thinking with the realities of mass culture.
Taplin recently wrote a major Rolling Stone article, “Who Killed the Counterculture?” — a question that feels urgent in a moment when the old cultural engines of dissent seem to have gone silent.
Artists vs. Reactionary Politics — A Historical Pattern
Jonathan Taplin: Throughout American history, whenever politics swings toward a reactionary right‑wing movement, artists rise up to push the other way. You can trace it back to Thoreau and Emerson in the 1830s, opposing slavery and the Mexican‑American War — long before Lincoln took a public stand. Thoreau even went to jail for refusing to pay taxes that supported the war.
You see the same pattern in the 1890s with Mark Twain railing against American imperialism, in the 1930s with Woody Guthrie fighting fascism, in the 1950s with the Beats and bebop musicians resisting McCarthyism, and of course in the 1960s with Dylan, Pete Seeger, and others supporting the civil rights movement.
My worry today is: Where is that counterculture now?
Just last week I had dinner with James Talarico, a young candidate for Senate in Texas. He was booked on Stephen Colbert — until David Ellison, who owns CBS and Paramount, had lunch at the Trump White House. The next day, Colbert was told he couldn’t have Talarico on. That’s what I mean by techno‑fascism: corporate power enforcing political limits on culture.
There are exceptions — Bad Bunny, or U2’s new record American Obituary — but most of the artists speaking out today are our age. Where are the young voices challenging authoritarianism?
The Right‑Wing “Counterculture” and the Collapse of Artistic Independence
Scheer: Your article quotes Greil Marcus saying the counterculture today is on the right — white nationalists, Stephen Miller types. And you argue that the rebellion in music and literature has been bought off.
Taplin: In the ’60s and ’70s, if I had told Bob Dylan to do a commercial, he would have thrown me out of the room. Selling out was unthinkable. Hollywood actors wouldn’t do commercials either — it would end their careers.
But Big Tech destroyed the economic foundation of creative work. I wrote about this in Move Fast and Break Things and The End of Reality. When artists can’t make money from their work, they become advertising shills. Look at Snoop Dogg — once a voice of hip‑hop rebellion, now making 80–90% of his income from ads. He’ll endorse anything as long as the check clears.
And the corporations don’t care if he’s a stoner — they care if he criticizes Trump. That’s where they draw the line. Executives have no courage. Edward R. Murrow took on McCarthy because CBS backed him. Today, when Jimmy Kimmel was attacked, Bob Iger ducked.
The Imperial Presidency, the Weakening of Institutions, and the Rise of Techno‑Fascism
Scheer: McCarthy was only a senator. Trump is president — and he’s shown how weak our institutions really are. The imperial presidency has been growing for decades, but Trump has taken it to a new level. The separation of powers has been gutted. Congress acts like a wing of the executive branch. Even the Supreme Court has mostly gone along with him.
The system we celebrated — limited power, checks and balances — is failing. And the counterculture, which once challenged power, can’t stop it.
Monopoly Power, Big Tech, and the New Oligarchy
Taplin: We’ve never seen monopolies like this. Ten people control an astonishing share of American wealth. Elon Musk is on his way to becoming a trillionaire. When he gives Trump $350 million, he’s not making a political contribution — he’s buying stock in the next decade of governance.
Peter Thiel openly says capitalism and democracy are incompatible. His intellectual mentor argues America needs a king.
Musk, Zuckerberg, Microsoft, OpenAI — they control 85% of AI. They control 80–90% of social media. They ingest every film ever made, every song ever recorded, every photo ever posted — and artists get nothing.
AI is already generating fake Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt videos. AI “slop” music floods Spotify. Instagram users create all the content while Zuckerberg keeps the money.
We are all working for these people.
AI, Surveillance, and the End of Privacy
Taplin: Palantir wants to use AI to analyze every CCTV camera in the world. With AI, they can identify faces, track conversations, flag political opponents. They want autonomous weapons — killer robots — to be the next goldmine.
AI will eliminate millions of jobs. PR firms that once had 120 employees now need 10 — eight to find clients, two to run the AI. Entry‑level jobs will vanish. That’s a revolutionary situation.
The Crisis of Democracy and the Need for Universal Basic Income
Scheer: The real question is: How do we control technology for human purposes? Technology should empower people, not cage them. Democracy requires agency — a middle class with choices. We’ve lost that.
Techno‑fascism isn’t a metaphor. These companies want to eliminate the public, or keep them intimidated and powerless. They don’t want empowered citizens; they want compliant users.
Taplin: A 2% tax on the net worth of the major tech companies could fund a sovereign wealth fund — like Alaska’s oil fund — that pays every American a dividend. Since their wealth comes from our data, we should get a share of the AI economy.
Otherwise, we’re heading toward Blade Runner.
The Failure of the Elite and the Illusion of Benevolent Billionaires
Scheer: I once interviewed Bill Gates. He and Warren Buffett talked about giving away their wealth. They seemed sincere. But today, the Epstein files show us the truth: the elite are decadent, reckless, unaccountable. They are not the adults in the room. They are the problem.
Universities, intellectuals, the people we counted on — they were seduced by proximity to power. The counterculture didn’t save us. The civil rights movement did. The peace movement did. Ordinary people did.
We must abandon the fantasy that the wealthy will save us.
The Interregnum — and What Comes Next
Taplin: I’m writing a new essay called The Interregnum, based on Gramsci’s line: “The old is dying and the new cannot be born. In this interregnum, many morbid symptoms appear.”
Trump’s vision — returning to the 1950s, when white Christian men ran everything — is a lie. The ’50s were terrible for women, people of color, LGBTQ people. Science was primitive. Kids died from polio. Trump wants to go backward.
Ross Douthat argues our decadence comes from liberalism. He’s wrong. The decadence comes from deregulation, digitization, and the hollowing out of institutions. Gambling apps, subscription porn, algorithmic addiction — this is not freedom. It’s isolation packaged as choice.
We want community. We want meaning. We want solidarity. That’s what the counterculture once offered.
Taplin: My hope is that this is an interregnum — like Cromwell’s England. Ten years of chaos, then a reckoning. When Cromwell died, Parliament dug up his body and put his head on a pike as a warning.
Someday, those who made our lives miserable — the Millers, the Thiels — must be held accountable.
The Deeper Crisis — Beyond Trump
Scheer: You’re underestimating the crisis by focusing too much on Trump. The real problem is the distortion of American capitalism — the rise of an insanely rich class, the destruction of the middle class, the concentration of power in the hands of a few tech oligarchs.
This didn’t start with Trump. It didn’t even start with Reagan. Clinton deregulated Silicon Valley and allowed the monopolies to form. That’s how we got here.
Editor’s Note: At a moment when the once vaunted model of responsible journalism is overwhelmingly the play thing of self-serving billionaires and their corporate scribes, alternatives of integrity are desperately needed, and ScheerPost is one of them. Please support our independent journalism by contributing to our online donation platform, Network for Good, or send a check to our new PO Box. We can’t thank you enough, and promise to keep bringing you this kind of vital news.
You can also make a donation to our PayPal or subscribe to our Patreon.