Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World
By Naomi Klein
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN 9780374610326
416pp.

Naomi Klein’s new book Doppelganger reads like a spy novel — except that she’s spying on a woman she has often been confused with: Naomi Wolf.

It’s easy to understand why the two have been mistaken for each other: they’re both Jewish, beautiful, brown haired women who wrote blockbusters in the ’90s — Wolf’s The Beauty Myth in 1990 and Klein’s No Logo in 1999.

But that is where the similarities end. Since the mid-2010s, Klein has been increasingly mistaken for Wolf who, over the years, has descended into a conspiratorialist and found a new tribe of alt-right types along the way, after being kicked off Twitter for spreading misinformation during the Covid pandemic.

Initially, Klein would sometimes correct people on Twitter when they would post “what happened to Naomi Klein?” — when they were referring to the other Naomi claiming, for example, that the Covid vaccine was “mass murder” or that newborns were falling ill due to their vaccinated mothers or that Covid patients’ waste had to be separated from sewage.

However, when Klein hears two women in a public bathroom asking “why is Naomi so dumb?”, she steps out to correct them but also uses that moment to begin a quest to study her “shadow self.”

Naomi Klein’s new book on her celebrity namesake, Naomi Wolf, examines the transformation of the latter from an influential feminist to conspiracy-monger, but also looks at some of the most important issues dividing the world

And the result is a look at some of the most important issues dividing the world — from the consequences of creating digital identities under Big Tech to the polarisation brought on by Covid to the rise of the far-right, across the world. You’d think such heavy topics would make for a depressing read but, while there’s much to cause alarm, it is a wildly entertaining book.

Klein’s book also examines famous doppelgangers in literature, film and how psychologists study them. And there are a lot of philosophical questions I found myself wondering about too, especially because we put so much of ourselves out there in the virtual world. “Am I who I think I am,” writes Klein, “or am I who others perceive me to be?”

The doppelganger, Klein writes, “represents the most repressed, depraved and rejected parts of ourselves that we cannot bear to see — the evil twin, the shadow self, the anti-self, the Hyde to our Jekyll.”

But at its heart, Doppelganger is a profile of Naomi Wolf and her trajectory from an influential feminist to a political adviser to former US Vice President Al Gore to her current state of conspiratorialist influencer.

Wolf became the subject of public humiliation in 2019 when promoting her book Outrages, a book about the persecution of homosexuals in Victorian Britain. During a live appearance on BBC radio, her interviewer fact-checked her claim about many men being executed for having gay sex. Her misunderstanding of a legal term meant she was wrong about the executions. It must have been hugely embarrassing.

Other errors were also discovered. The US edition of the book was cancelled and, in a way, so was she. Was this the turning point for Wolf who went from scholar to slightly cuckoo? Wolf has claimed Edward Snowden is a spy, that 5G technology affects the air, that ISIS beheadings were staged by the US government, and that Barack Obama ordered police to clear the Occupy movement camps. And then there’s the anti-vaccine rhetoric.

It may have got her kicked off Twitter, but she found a home — and audiences — on the alt-app Gettr, as well as slots on Fox News and Steve Bannon’s show. Here, she was appearing as Dr Wolf, talking about the science and health around Covid, though her PhD is in literature.

The easy thing to do is dismiss Wolf as “a joke,” writes Klein, “but she’s not a funny one.” Wolf is perhaps more influential in this new avatar and Klein’s deep dive into her doppalganger’s metamorphosis makes for a fascinating read. Thanks to all the mistaken-ness happening in the virtual world, Klein has an incredible front-row seat. Wolf’s transformation, writes Klein, also speaks to the “horror of the society that flips fascist from within.”

I’m sure a lot of people come to your mind who, after a dip in their ratings or credibility or “being cancelled” on media, resurrect themselves on alternative media — as right-wing podcasters or Vloggers on YouTube, peddling all kinds of disinformation. (I’m thinking of a certain doctor posing as a political analyst sitting in Washington DC selling his Kool-Aid to Pakistanis.)

Naomi Wolf was once a darling for the liberal media but, due to her own making, had nowhere to go but the other side. If you watch clips of her on Fox, you will often find TV hosts or right-wing podcasters such as Steve Bannon telling her that they can’t believe she’s on their show because she had, for example, voted for Biden.

Here, Klein credits Bannon, in a way, for organising audiences and viewpoints and ultimately being able to channel them into movements or a vote bank. The left, meanwhile, was bogged down by issues like identity politics or language wars. They were unable to articulate their fears about the rise of the right-wing in a way that Bannon, with accomplices like Wolf, had successfully done by stoking fears about vaccine passports being akin to slavery.

Covid, Klein argues, exposed the schisms within the left and right political camps in the US. Sometimes the lines were blurred too. New-age influencers were echoing ideas usually promoted by anti-vaccine proponents. The chapter on the ‘wellness’ industry’s tilt to the right was perhaps my favourite chapter.

That fitness enthusiasts were echoing terms used by fascists because they could not practise their ‘wellness’ routines during lockdown, did not surprise Klein, who documents many of the conspiracy theories they were spewing — that the unhealthy were getting Covid and that they, fitness nuts, were healthy, so should not have to adhere to lockdown protocols.

Her linking ‘wellness’ culture to eugenics ideology — “cull the impure blood” — is shocking but it’s also what makes Klein such a good researcher. She connects the dots and is never condescending towards the subject, including — or rather, especially — Wolf.

Wolf and her ilk tapped into peoples’ insecurities and anxieties during lockdown, when they were isolated and without real connections. They offered them “alternative views” grounded in “my truths” or “what they won’t tell you on mainstream media”, which fuelled distrust and paranoia but also promised justice.

The January 6, 2021 riots, much like the May 9, 2022 riots in Pakistan, were a small example of how a movement driven by conspiracy theories clashed with elite power structures. As both showed, the consequences can be dangerous.

The writer is a journalism instructor.

X: @ledeinglady

Published in Dawn, Books & Authors, October 29th, 2023