The intriguing conceit of the book "Doppelgänger" is how the accident of their same first names, ethnic background, occupations and oppositional political positions led Klein to become obsessed with the “other” Naomi: Naomi Wolf.
Reading Klein is like a voyeur reading a voyeur and it’s interesting to see the funhouse mirror world that Klein inhabits. But what makes it more interesting is she’s not blind to all of her side’s idiocies. Her mix of credulity (when it comes to the government and Pharma during Covid) and sophisticated self-awareness makes for a compelling read, such as when she writes: “…when something becomes an issue in [conservative world] it automatically ceases to matter everywhere else. This has happened on so many issues that I sometimes feel as if we are tethered to each other as reverse marionettes…”
Similarly she makes a cogent point about the dangers of what she calls “progressive-cloaked capitalism”, saying it leads to a “war on meaning”, and that what unites the far left and far right is hyper-individualism.
She sees Leftists who have gone to the dark side as unprincipled grifters, but it’s telling she never mentions someone like a Dr Peter Mccullough or a Glenn Greenwald. Klein prefers to “punch down”.
It’s interesting to see how seriously she takes her legacy and brand and while she’s hardly alone in that it’s a cautionary tale. It's the story of modern journalism in which what elites think of you is far more important than the truth. She seems crushed by Philip Roth’s tarnished legacy, wondering what hope there is for her if his wealth and contrivances failed to protect him. Perhaps that’s the point and lesson: wealth and herculean efforts at self-salvation fail.
The Leftist tendency towards totalitarianism is reflected in her desire for a monopoly on language. She sees, apparently, no debasement in Leftist use of terms like “racist” or “white nationalist” (and, in fact, invokes them spuriously in the book) but also finds it painful when populists use the Left’s proprietary terms like “fake news” and “othering”. She “others” Bannon in this book while accusing him of appropriating the term. (Apparently only leftists are allowed to be among the “other”.)
Her religious bigotry or ignorance is noticeable also in saying that religious people think faith is a defense against disease when actually religious people believe there is an afterlife, which means they aren’t as deathly afraid of disease as she.
All that said, she is a fine writer and a better one than her doppelgänger. She is wise in saying that the censorship of covid discussion gave fuel to conspiracy theorists and even faults herself for not questioning the narrative, due to not wanting to be conflated with conspiracy theorists. In other words, the truth is not something to be sought for its own sake but strategically deployed which leads to all sorts of negative second order effects.
One suspects that without the angst over her reputation and legacy she would be freer to seek veracity in directions that do not align with the world’s opinion and may even occasionally align, heaven forfend, with her doppelgänger’s.
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