Review of Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein

Wait, this book isn’t by Naomi Wolf? Why did I even bother … jk. Although, ironically, I haven’t read anything by Naomi Klein previously, and I’ve read two books by Naomi Wolf (more on that in a bit). I don’t think I personally have conflated the two Naomis myself, but I’m sure that’s just the lack of opportunity. Doppelganger intrigued me because I wanted to hear about Klein’s deep dive into the world in which Wolf has immersed herself and what lessons that holds for the fragile state of our democracies.

Though this book is built on premise of people mistaking the two Naomis to a ridiculous degree online, Klein makes it clear that this book isn’t so much about Wolf as it is about the crowd she hangs out with these days. Klein is interested in this “mirror world,” as she calls it, and how Wolf went from third-wave feminist darling to conspiracy-theory monger and general alt-right poster woman. So she listens to Steve Bannon’s podcast, plumbs the depth of Wolf’s Twitter, and generally examines the ways in which the alt right and adjacent movements use, manipulate, and take advantage of media (both traditional and social) to sway people to their cause.

Because we are living in a unique tipping point in history. Mass literacy battles with mass media illiteracy. Even critical thinking doesn’t exempt one from falling prey to misinformation, of course. One of Klein’s key points is that Wolf is a smart person and a deep thinker—many prominent people in these movements are, and it would be a mistake to underestimate them or label anyone associated with them as less intelligent. Rather, Klein wants to figure out what makes the mirror world so enticing.

Doppelganger is one of an emerging genre of pop culture political books looking at the effect of the internet age on politics and society. Some of Klein’s most important takeaways come from reflection on how the internet encourages us to become doppelgangers of ourselves (in how we perform ourselves online). As someone who “grew up” on the internet—on Neopets and Geocities and message boards and live chatrooms and whatnot—I feel this. To this day, I might spend more time on any given day talking to people behind my “tachyondecay” username and an avatar than my real name and face. On an individual basis that’s fine. But when you scale this up to a societal level, Klein points out, cracks appear that leave us vulnerable to the misinformation that fuels conspiracy and polarization.

In this way, Klein scatters references to different forms of doppelganger throughout the book. She did a deep dive into doppelgangers in literature and film (she talks a lot about Philip Roth, shrug). I watched Dual because she mentions it here and it has Karen Gillan in it (it’s weird and not at all satisfying, IMO). Though there’s something amusing imagining Klein obsessively consuming all of these books and movies for research purposes, all in all I don’t know that she successfully connects her doppelganger discussion to her broader points about the mirror world. I understand that she’s trying to say Wolf is more a doppelganger of herself than she is of Klein, that Wolf’s trip through the looking glass has resulted in that kind of self-doppelganging. But it feels like a slightly contrived twist.

As far as Wolf herself goes, well … I read The Beauty Myth when I was 22, young, naïve (though I am pleasantly surprised to find I didn’t go gaga over it and therefore can honestly say I had my own reservations). Then five years later I read Vagina and criticized it for much the same reasons Klein criticizes Wolf: mistaking anecdotal evidence for science, confirmation bias, etc. Both of these reviews are real trips to read now, given that I was writing them back when I thought I was a cisgender man (oops). But I stand by my work.

I respect Klein taking the high road and refusing to dangle Wolf in front of us like a cautionary tale. Still … she is. Like Klein, I can’t speculate about the precise factors that galvanized Wolf’s slide towards authoritarian militancy and conspiracy theories—but I can watch it, judge it, and remind myself that we are all vulnerable here. That’s what Klein realizes as she canvasses for her husband in the Canadian federal election and visits with people who should be sympathetic to the NDP but are raving anti-vaxxers instead.

Doppelganger offers up some cogent and prescient (in the sense that even for a relatively recent book, it feels like Klein anticipated some of what has happened since it was published) analysis of the cracks in our media world. It stumbles a bit as Klein dances around her various topics of doppelgangers, propaganda, etc., and as a result it feels a little longer and more repetitive than it needs to be. This is a book that I would recommend if, like me, you are a sucker for discussions of media literacy, awareness of conspiracy theories, and how we can strengthen our democracy. It has enough substance to be worth the read—yet having read it, I don’t feel like I particularly learned much I didn’t already know.