Reviews with content warning for Ableism - Doppelganger

This was my first time reading Naomi Klein, though her work came recommended so my expectations were high. Doppelganger lived up to these expectations - I found it to be an engaging, insightful look at a range of related political and social issues, using ideas about doubling and replication as a springboard. Notably, this is the first text of any length I've read where I came away feeling like I'd actually improved my understanding of the politics surrounding Israel and Palestine.

I found the section on autism a little random - slightly strange in tone and out of step with the rest of the book, even though the changeling-as-doppelganger theory made for an obvious link to the title. Klein's denial that autism is a disability ("just a different way of being human" - well-meaning, but no!) meant she didn't engage with disability politics in that section too closely, instead critiquing the Autism Mom Community largely on their promotion of medical misinformation. None of this content was incorrect, of course, but something just felt... off.

Overall, though, this was a few pages of a largely excellent book, and I'll look to read more by Klein in future.

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woolstation's review

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challenging dark informative medium-paced

4.5

Good book! Trumpism and the growing far-right make it so hard to talk about politics without feeling ridiculous or tiresome; as Klein says repeatedly, "It's too ridiculous to take seriously, and too serious to be ridiculous." Klein is a Virgil, guiding us through what she calls the "mirror world" of far-right conspiracy theories. This is an indispensable book for those of us on the left who want to understand what we are up against - which we all should. My only let-down is that the section at the end where she charts a path forward is a little vague and platitude-y, but that's not the focus of the book, and anyway, a craving for easy answers is part of what she's warning against to begin with.

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siebensommer's review against another edition

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challenging informative slow-paced

4.25

at times it feels like it's losing itself in so many different themes (all very important and well-researched) and then you get to the end and all comes together.. oof

in fact it makes a certain kind of sick sense that our era of peak personal branding has coincided so precisely with an unprecedented crisis point for our shared home. the vast complex planetary crisis requires coordinated collective effort on an international scale. that may be theoretically possible, but it sure is daunting. far easier to master ourselves - the brand called you.

we did [change the discourse] but we appear to have done it at the precise moment when words and ideas underwent a radical currency devaluation

what is the alternative that is being offered on this side of the glass? do we have a plan for a world without sacrificial people? and does that plan feel credible, rooted in action?

we are not, and never were, selfmade. we are made and unmade by one another

hitler [...] was not the civilised democratic west's evil other, but its shadow, its doppelganger.

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lizard800's review against another edition

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challenging dark informative reflective sad tense medium-paced

5.0

This book put into words for me so much about how I've been feeling about the left and social movements. If you're a leftist of any flavour you really need to read this. I'm taking away a lot from this book, but this quote (which is my favourite) sums up my biggest takeaway: "every story of triumph for the fascist right is also a story of fragmentation, sectarianism, and stubborn refusal to make strategic alliances on the anti-fascist left".

Klein is an excellent narrator.

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milkfran's review

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dark informative medium-paced

5.0

This was a book I couldn’t read without a pen in my hand to frantically underline every other word. I will be recommending this to everyone else I know who is also feeling similarly adrift in the bleak Mirror World of our times.

A bit of context: I was (and am, recent political forays aside) a huge fan of Radiohead and picked up a second-hand copy of No Logo as a teenager to try and seem cool after reading an interview with Thom Yorke around the time they were recording Kid A saying he was reading it on their tour bus. It left me depressed for weeks but also quietly radicalised me to the extent that in the guff of my UCAS personal statement I wrote about how much Naomi Klein and George Orwell between them had made me pick a politics & history degree. I’m not sure how useful 5 years and £81k of debt to do the aforementioned degree was but reading Naomi Klein is never a waste.

I was slightly apprehensive when I initially picked Doppelgänger up because I’ll admit to not being that interested in Naomi Wolf’s wild ramblings but although Good!Naomi does discuss Bad!Naomi in detail

(“if the Naomi be Klein
you’re doing just fine
If the Naomi be Wolf
Oh, buddy. Ooooof.”
@MarkPopham, via Twitter)

Wolf’s descent through the looking glass is more of a narrative scaffold to hang Klein’s depressingly prescient thoughts on our current predicament/ the culture wars/ the disinformation pandemic/ late stage capitalism’s final dying wheeze/- whatever you want to call it- on.

On p.322, she sums it up in her own words, describing the book as being about “The self as a perfect brand, the self as digital avatar, the self as data mine, the self as idealized body, the self as racist and anti-Semitic projection, the child as mirror of the self, the self as eternal victim.”

I winced a little when the first mention of the pandemic came up (there seems to have been a collective forgetting about it all for many of us?) but reading her analysis of all the madness was a cathartic debrief about it all that I didn’t know I needed.

As well as this, the bits criticising Israel from a Jewish perspective were even more powerful in light of the fact they were written before the repercussions for the October 7th attacks and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinians.

The only weak spot of the book for me was Chapter 10, ‘the anti-vax prequel’. Obviously the online discourse about autism and Autism Moms is fertile ground to harvest for a book about disinformation, and reading Naomi’s honest unfiltered thoughts on her son’s diagnosis felt raw and honest, some of it made me a little uncomfortable. It also felt the least fleshed out of all the chapters, perhaps because it was the most personal of them all and understandably difficult for the author to step back and gain some objectivity and distance.

However, in the extremely unlikely event that Naomi Klein is reading this though, can I kindly say that the call is coming from inside the house and your son’s autism did not come from nowhere… certainly not from the parent who is a high-flying academic and self described ‘seeker of justice’… who discussed the eating disorder she had as a teen… and the one who says “‘pattern recognition’ is often how I describe the work of my life” on p.226.

All of the glowing 5 star reviews on the blurb are accurate but whether the people in power or people we’ve lost to the mirror world will actually read it remains to be seen. Nevertheless, I’ll keep recommending it to anyone who’ll listen.

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ivvtheral's review against another edition

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challenging informative reflective medium-paced

5.0

Conspiracy theorists get the facts wrong but often get the feelings right ... The word for the system driving those feelings starts with c, but if no one ever taught you how capitalism works, and instead told you it was all about freedom and sunshine and Big Macs and playing. y the rules to get the life you deserve, then its easy to see how you might confuse it with another c-word: conspiracy.

Naomi Klein (not Wolf) and her trip into the Mirror World proved to be a surprisingly light-hearted read for a topic so serious, and by its very nature, dark. This is something I picked up on a whim, having recognised her name from the much-worn copy of No Logo I'd inherited from some random, Little Free Library that I haven't visited in years. I expected little, and I received a lot.

Klein put into words a lot of the feelings I myself have had since I first began paying attention to brief mentions of a mysterious illness in late 2019. It was nice to see my thoughts, my feelings, and my utter hopelessness at the (seemingly) sudden change in western society that has cost lives and relationships, and to see it in a way that was clear, precise, and not altogether hopeless.

Contemplating capitalism and conspiracy, and their innate relationship, Klein tracks her own veritable doppelgängers descent into something other than reality; a path many have set out on since the first lockdowns of 2020. This path many took was ridiculed. Worse, those that led others down the path were seemingly immune to reason, to logic.

Impunity can drive a person mad. Maybe it can drive a whole society mad.

I needed to read this, I think, to find perspective, and to feel less alone. I think there's a lot of people who need to read this so as to reframe a lot of their feelings and confusion and general shrugging in the face of absurdism. It helps. And, it gives hope.