The Fantasy Review’s discussion and review of Doppelganger by Naomi Klein.
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The lovely Naomi Klein is often mistaken for Naomi Wolf. An unfortunate similarity in names and jobs in the media, perhaps, but quite the concept for Klein’s brilliant memoir, Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World.
Doppelganger explores Klein’s deep-dive into the cesspool of Bannon and his ilk, weaving their conspiratorial reflection of reality through a narrative exposing a hidden and ignored (mostly online) group of people.
The manosphere might call these forgotten people – a large chunk of their audience – “the silent majority” and they are not wrong. Those who look at our political systems and see nothing for them on the ballot can be forgiven for turning from the propaganda machine of the mainstream media towards alternative sources.
Many, however, end up in the alt-right spaces online with presenters who cheerlead for turning our western countries into worse versions of their 1950s selves.
Why This Book is Important
I read Doppelganger on its release, but didn’t have much to say about it. Now that Trump has been re-elected, this mirror world Klein talked about has become reality, with the old order fading into the background.
Klein writes:
“I quickly learned that my identity crisis was likely unavoidable: the appearance of one’s doppelganger is almost always chaotic, stressful, and paranoid-inducing, and the person encountering their double is invariably pushed to their limits by the frustration and uncanniness of it all.”
For everyone on the Left, who is not a neoliberal and didn’t see Biden or Harris as great leaders for the change America needed, these words might hit home pretty hard right about now.
Because if Trump is anything, it’s the mirror of who the Left wants and needs for a sizable progressive shift. We need an anti-neoliberal, socialist Trump.
Trump’s win might not have been a surprise, but it is certainly frustrating for those of us on the left who knew that these centrist morons with no understanding of what normal people want or need were not going to beat the far-right nutters.
I feel this particularly strongly in the UK, where I live. Reform UK is going to perform even better in the next election. I can feel it in my bones. They might even cause the Conservative party to collapse under its own hubris.
That’s the Left’s fault. I’m a Green Party member, but I can understand why the majority of people on the left want to unite under Labour. The issue is that Labour are not left-wing. They are centrists. Sure, they offer some progressive ideas, certainly more than the recent Conservative leaders, but nothing that will significantly change that “silent majority’s” lives for the better.
One of the most important things we can learn from Bernie Sanders’s popularity among Trump voters (you read that right) is that the Left can attract the dispossessed. We just need to have the vision. Right now, those with the vision are alt-right lunatics and they’ve taken power in the U.S. and they are inching ever closer to power across Europe.
Why You Should Read Doppelganger
From popular conspiracy theories to anti-vaxxers and more, Doppelganger is an in-depth analysis of the mirror world we are all experiencing as our reality right now. If you want to know why Trump won and Harris lost, this is the only book you need.
I connected with Klein’s obsession with this world. I’ve spent my fair share of hours watching in horrified interest the latest Ben Shapiro drivel or Lawrence Fox’s unintelligible podcast on YouTube.
I can’t help myself. I want to understand what they are thinking and why. For the most part, these guys are grifters. But there are some who seem sincere. I don’t know which is worse.
The part that terrifies me is that people like Steve Bannon sometimes have the same talking points you might hear on Novara Media, or on Owen Jones’ YouTube channel. For example, the “Big Tech” conversation has recently turned into a conversation about technofeudalism.
Yanis Varoufakis – very much on the left – wrote a book on this topic and the Left, except for some quibbles, see the potential truth in the theory, and the issues his conclusion reveals.
Bannon sees this issue too, and understands that he can use these facts, flip the solutions on their head, and create a mirror world version of the arguments against Big Tech.
It is terrifying. But Klein couldn’t stop watching, and can’t either.
Pick up Doppelganger and take a trip into the mirror world, because one day very soon, you’re going to be living in it, whether you want to or not. And you need to understand an issue to fight back against it.
