“Doppelganger – A Trip into the Mirror World,” by Naomi Klein, 2023
A doppelganger is a double, usually not quite the same as the original. And there is the rub. The book concerns Klein and her ostensible doppelganger, Naomi Wolf, who from being a feminist is now a fact-free conspiracy-monger with Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson and the like. Klein uses this image and the 'mirror world' to describe the movement of former liberals, Bernie types and actual leftists to the right, mostly under the influence of the CoVid epidemic. She calls their approach 'diagonalism,' a term I'm sure won't catch on. This has happened in history before when the Brownshirts in Germany and the Blackshirts in Italy were national 'socialists,' but were actually front-men for the capitalist class.
Klein does not engage in a deep class analysis of this trend, but it is most firmly rooted in petit-bourgeois businessmen – or those who aspire to that position. And many small businesses did take it on the chin during CoVid. In one chapter she notes the great number of gym managers, yoga teachers and new age 'healers' who protested CoVid lockdowns, as it shut their body businesses for awhile. Their businesses were not alone. She also makes clear that at the same time the quack medicine, natural food and supplement types were competing with Big Pharma for cash and credibility.
The book is personal, wanders a bit, and sometimes comes off as a cultural look at society, with lots of film and literary references. Philip Roth, James Baldwin, Dorian Gray and Oscar Wilde are some of her reference points in this area as she scans the notion of 'the double.' Her goal is to replace the 'socialism of fools' with the socialism of facts. So what are the main points Klein dwells on, other than Wolf, who she says “is a person who couldn't tell the difference between temporary public health measures and a coup d'etat.” Camile Paglia agreed, calling Wolf “a Seventeen Magazine level of thinker.” Gore Vidal said “Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences." This was the trajectory of Naomi Wolf.
As a young student Klein was actually inspired by Wolf to become a writer, based on the latter's book The Beauty Myth. Klein's first book was No Logo, which became a famous attack on consumer capitalism. Yet Wolf sided with the Supreme Court's 'states rights' logic overturning of “Roe v. Wade,” and instead celebrates 'mom' culture and the reproductive function. She even bought a .22 rifle to repel home invaders! Early on Klein noticed the lack of facts and the instant, extreme opinions that Wolf had. This has not changed, with Wolf and many others on the far-right lazily throwing around terms like 'genocide,' 'slavery,' 'Nazis,' 'dictatorship,' 'apartheid,' 'the Holocaust,' 'Jim Crow' and the like, referring to trivial, fun-house mirror versions of those very real things. In other words, 'words' have become meaningless to them, really for the purpose of subterfuge. Meaning itself has an overblown mangled double.
Klein points out that there are very real conspiracies, but the ones ginned up by far-rightists and fascists are designed as diversions from criticizing the capitalists and their profit system. Hunches, suppositions, lies and guesses replace facts. 'Q-Anon, 'the deep state,' transgender panics, a Chinese invasion, 9-11 Truthers, the Protocols of Zion, vaccines, Satan – you name it. After years of scanning right-wing sites, Klein has regurgitated many of their sad theories and the book is chock full of them. Yet in the mix are very real problems – government surveillance, Pharma profiteering, media manipulation, unhealthy food – that the right takes advantage of and liberals and leading Democrats ignore.
Most people are unaware of the practice of real reporting, so to them everything is just an opinion. Shared standards, double & triple sourcing, real sources, actual interviews, verifying documents, peer-review, being real about uncertainties, fact checking, possible review by experts, lawyers and editors – all are part of real journalism. The point is to get as close to the truth as possible, but of course the media does not always do that. Yet lame conspiracy theories, government handouts and 'fake news' verbiage never do.
She compares a 400 truck Canadian convoy opposed to the deaths of indigenous children at Catholic boarding schools with a later owner-operator truck convoy that shut down Ottawa about CoVid, partly led by an open Nazi. Similar tactic, yet two different motivations. You could even say that the inept January 6 selfie riot was a sad copy of the mass BLM demonstrations after George Floyd's murder. One was a twisted mirror of the other. Even Klein's own concept of 'The Shock Doctrine' was used by the right to explain how CoVid had engendered a 'dictatorship.' Bannon finds arenas the Democrats are ignoring and starts pushing them... and there are many.
Klein notes the confluence of parts of the wellness industry and New Age thinking with the Libertarian hard-right in response to CoVid. It wasn't just Republicans, Christian nationalists and fundies. Of the top 10 misinformation sources about CoVid: 3 were chiropractors, 1 an osteopath, 1 a supplement entrepreneur, a couple who sold essential oils, the antisemitic editor of the Health Nut News and the superfood guru behind GreenMedInfo who accuses Bill Gates of wanting to depopulate the earth. "Holistic psychiatrists' and celebrity Oprah doctors joined that crowd. In Klein's words, “a who's who of woo.” The angle of these people is that 'public' health is so yesterday, the only thing that matters is your own private health, your own body. Buy our products and to hell with public stuff! This blending of fascism and New Age thinking also happened in the 1930s.
Klein relates this to the whole issue of the perfect body, purity and 'natural' foodyism, which connects to other body issues, like 'Asberger syndrome,” eugenics and Nazi race 'science.' There sterilization and murder of the unfit, those with bad genes and the untermensch was appropriate. Hans Asperger, an Austrian psychologist who became a Nazi, recommended that only a few 'high-performing' autistic children be kept alive, while the rest were sent to be killed. Some U.S. wellness types maintained that the unhealthy should die if they get CoVid instead of 'bothering' the rest of the population. I.E. a 'cull.' Working class people over 65 and darker skin colors died first, with unvaccinated Republicans dying later, so this strategy initially had a racist edge too. Many 'essential workers,' especially Latino or African like those in meat-packing plants, were infected. But 'the healthy' would survive!. Klein says this smacks of 'ecofascism,' though a better phrase might be social Darwinism.
Runaway individualism and self-centered hedonism stand out as huge cultural motivations for moving to the right, as it is the ethic of advanced capital. “You are the CEO of your own company: Me, Inc.” Refusing to wear a mask, get a shot, distance or isolate indicates you do not actually care about anyone outside yourself, allowing the epidemic to spread. Individualism also promotes the idea that profits should always predominate over health. People like Bannon do not recognize society exists – only the 'guvmint' – so anything done by the government is a plot. This is Libertarianism at its finest, a useful word that Klein oddly only uses once. The libertarians especially reserve their ire for the 'CCP' – Chinese collectivists (and Democratic ones) lurking behind all evil, including lab leaks. Marxists of whatever type are the uber-enemy. For libertarians, if a government can successfully deal with a pandemic, that has to be torpedoed. They are 'sovereign citizens' accountable to nothing outside themselves or their family.
Much of this is also tainted by anti-Semitism according to Klein. As she puts it: “...the post-Holocaust lull in open Jew-hatred is coming to a close.” Jews become the personification of big capital and also the personification of those who are attempting to overthrow capital – communists. It's logically ludicrous but if you are white, 'middle class' and an enemy of both labor and big capital, it makes emotional sense – this even AFTER you take billionaires money, celebrate them or vote for one. This is the role of fascism – to be a subaltern to preserving the profit system - and big capital knows it. In this context she talks about the many bombings of Gaza and killing of Palestinians by the Zionist 'muscular Jew' who actually manufactures anti Semitism through his actions.
The crusade of right-wing 'warrior moms' to save the children mirror real attempts to improve the lot of children through quality daycare, national pregnancy leave, women's health care services including abortion, hospital birthing centers, certification of doulas and midwives, rights to breastfeed and funds / meals for poor children. But instead it dealt with how 'masks' would actually suffocate children and vaccines would turn them into zombies. Democrats 'sucking the blood of children' is part of the hare-brained attitude. They claimed the children 'can't breathe' while ignoring the very real pleas of black men being suffocated by cops. It was crackpot momism. Now there is even an organization to represent them - the 'Moms for Liberty.'
Klein is most inspired by the 15 years of 'Red Vienna,” where Austro-Marxist left social-democrats dominated the city, providing quality health care, housing, education, exercise, jobs and culture for years. That experiment was destroyed by the Austrian fascists in 1934, yet Vienna is still one of the most livable cities on the planet. Wolf's liberal feminism was always glass-ceiling, lean-in pro-capitalist feminism. This is really the major schism that Klein sees. As she puts it: “...no one ever taught you about how capitalism works, and instead told you it was all about freedom and sunshine and Big Macs ...” That approach is the biggest fun-house mirror of all.
Prior reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 16 year archive, using these terms: “Libertarianism,” “I Am Not Your Negro”(Baldwin); Parasite,” “Us,” “Weird Conservative Feminism,” 'fascism,' “Capitalist Realism” (Fisher); 'red-brown,' “After the Fact,” “Modern Rhinoceroses,” “Antifascism, Sports and Sobriety.”
And I bought it at May Day Books!
Red Frog
October 27, 2023
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