The premise of Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger, that the author shares a similar name and is confused with another woman who has taken a far-right turn, provides an interesting throughline to explore the doubling/fracturing of our politics, our world, and ourselves. Klein’s obsession with the “Other Naomi,” Naomi Wolf, and her disappearance into the “mirror world” of conspiratorial, deranged, conservative allows Klein to explore that world, its histories, and our relationship to it. Through the literary device and mythos of the doppelganger, Klein goes beyond her double to explore issues such as the anti-vaccine movement, climate change, Israel, fascism, broader conspiracies, social media, and capitalism.
While I did initially think that the premise of her being confused with a doppelganger, another Naomi, was flimsy, it became just an interesting metaphor for how “this” can turn into “that.” This book covers a lot of ground and does it quite well, balancing memoir with a deep dive into many of our social, political, and planetary problems. As the book goes on, Klein returns to the memoir elements and her personal doppelganger as a grounding and launchpoint, which might lead to some frustration for some readers who are interested purely in the one-sided relationship between these two Naomis. However, it seems like this is more personal than Klein’s previous work, which seemingly focuses on the aforementioned subject matters in greater depth.
This is a tricky book to talk about. I agree with most if not all of her arguments and points made. At a certain point in my life, when I was far more in the liberal/neoliberal camp, this book could have been life-changing. I found myself nodding my head often and vigorously, thinking, “Exactly! That’s a great way to put that.” I hope that this book can be transformative for some readers, guiding them through the arguments for a progressive, leftist future that values all life, is empathetic to people and ruthless to systems, can transform the capitalist machine grinding our brains into mush. Truthfully, this book isn’t for the faint of heart; it delves into some scary places, such as beautiful places ravaged by climate change, Nazi Germany, hateful online spaces occupied by the alt-right and their real-life outbursts of violence, and the occupation of Palestine. Each of these drawn as a doppelganger of something else. Everything from ourselves, our governments, and our planet have a doppelganger, whether its a transformation on the internet, a transformation into fanatical fascism, or a transformation into a dangerous uninhabitable ecosystem. Still, Klein urges us not to look away but address the issues head on (and, in fact, she argues that ignoring these issues is what leads to doppelgangers in the first place), destroy fascism and neoliberalism and the “self”-ishness it instills, and embrace one another as collective members of a planet on fire who can and must transform the world.
Klein also aptly describes the phenomenon in which people (fools) confuse all sequential Naomis with the first Naomi they have ever met. Similarly, every time I hear or read the name Naomi, I think of Josh from Love Island UK Season 1 shouting “NIGH-OH-MEH!” at the Naomi who he’s fallen deeply for, totally upending his previous relationship with Rachel. Perhaps that’s the true heartbreak in all of this.
4/5