Features Editor Michael Keating Dake reviews Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World.
Naomi Klein is a Canadian author and political activist whose work is largely critical of neoliberal economics, abuses of state power, and the flaws of modern capitalism more broadly. I first became acquainted with her writing as a secondary school student, a period largely spent immersed in the works of other such luminaries (but one that would arguably have been better spent preparing for the state exams). Klein’s magnum opus, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, established her credentials as a bold voice in the literary community for institutional accountability, political change, and ecological and socioeconomic justice.
Klein discusses the oftentimes humorous instances in which journalists and social media users have mistaken either woman for the other, attributing the confusion to the fact that both are brunette, intellectual, North American Jewish women who write “big idea books,” and share the same first name. Nevertheless, Klein expresses her frustration at the conflation, highlighting important distinctions between the two writers’ respective ideological values and political perspectives. Klein, a Canadian from a working-class, public University background, is a socialist, whereas Wolf hails from a privately-educated, middle-class American background, and began her public life as a staunch liberal and ally of the Clinton administration.
Klein’s analysis of Wolf’s descent from respected feminist author and public intellectual to anti-vaccine and pro-gun militancy is a complicated tale that highlights the difficulty of making sense of the truth in a saturated digital landscape. While Klein is critical of Wolf’s conversion to reactionary extremism and medical misinformation, she writes with empathy for Wolf, whose spectacular fall from grace was precipitated by public humiliation in the form of a disastrous podcast interview (during which the central thesis of a book she had authored was debunked, casting serious doubt on the scholarly integrity and academic quality of her work).
Klein’s exploration of the parallels and distinctions between the careers of these two feminist titans makes for a fascinating read. The two women are juxtaposed, and thus become case studies to illustrate the growing gulf between political activist communities with increasingly diametrically opposed views of reality. With the failure of many states around the world to protect their citizens’ health and implement effective welfare policies to mitigate the socioeconomic impact of lockdown measures, many disaffected people lost faith in mainstream liberalism and political institutions, falling into a black hole of “alternative facts” and misinformation. Klein’s diatribe is a sobering wake up call for those concerned about the future of democracy, the role of media (including social media) in political conversations, and the efficacy of environmental and public health messaging in the face of virulent misinformation campaigns and demagogic political agitation.
Klein explores a myriad of social, economic, and political issues, including the climate crisis, Israel and Palestine, the emergence of far-right online influencers, and the latter’s troubling influence on public discourse. While certainly a compelling and thought-provoking read, it occasionally feels jumbled and poorly structured. Using her “Mirrorworld” and “Doppleganger” analogies, Klein attempts to diagnose the psychological fragmentation and social malaise attributed to digital capitalism, an ambitious task that sometimes escapes the parameters of this relatively short volume. An intellectually stimulating work, Klein’s ideas are worthy of exploring in greater detail in further volumes.
While her attempts at addressing a variety of social and political problems are indeed commendable, I would be pleased to see a longer sequel installed, one in which Klein has the space to delve deeper yet into Mirror World.