Reviews tagging 'Religious bigotry'

Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein

8 reviews

milkfran's review

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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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Death, Genocide, Hate crime, Homophobia, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Antisemitism, Mass/school shootings, Religious bigotry, War, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Eating disorder

uranaishi's review

challenging emotional informative reflective tense medium-paced

4.75

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Gaslighting

Moderate: Body shaming, Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Emotional abuse, Fatphobia, Genocide, Physical abuse, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Religious bigotry, Colonisation, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

Minor: Ableism, Body horror, Cancer, Confinement, Death, Domestic abuse, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Misogyny, Racism, Sexism, Slavery, Transphobia, Violence, Xenophobia, Excrement, Islamophobia, Medical content, Grief, Murder, Pregnancy, War, and Deportation

peckreadsbooks's review

adventurous challenging dark emotional funny informative medium-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Bullying, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Racism, Rape, Sexism, Slavery, Violence, Xenophobia, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Religious bigotry, Cultural appropriation, Gaslighting, Colonisation, War, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

cerysl's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense slow-paced

5.0

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Bullying, Chronic illness, Death, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Mental illness, Misogyny, Physical abuse, Racial slurs, Racism, Sexism, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Medical content, Grief, Mass/school shootings, Religious bigotry, Murder, Cultural appropriation, Gaslighting, Colonisation, War, Classism, Deportation, and Pandemic/Epidemic

minniepauline's review

challenging informative inspiring medium-paced

This is a brilliant book. Klein’s writing is accessible, well-researched and compassionate. It was a very tough read, emotionally, for me. But one I think I’m going to want to revisit.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Death, Genocide, Hate crime, Homophobia, Racism, Torture, Violence, Antisemitism, Religious bigotry, Murder, Cultural appropriation, Colonisation, War, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

fkshg8465's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional informative sad medium-paced

5.0

I don’t even know where to start. So many WOW moments for me (I don’t consider the following spoilers, but in case you might, feel free to stop reading here):

1. I had no idea the battle of the Naomis even existed. I was shocked to read about how far down the rabbit hole Naomi Wolf had fallen into, especially because I loved her book The Beauty Myth.
2. I was also shocked to read that Christiane Northrup had sold out. I used to respect these two women so much!
3. I was surprised that Canada wasn’t as free from extreme rightist politics as I thought.
4. I was puzzled as to why Naomi Klein, Naomi Wolf, and Naomi Campbell would be confused. They are so very different women, and even if it’s an aggressive autocorrect, the first letters of their last names aren’t even anywhere close to each other on the keyboard!!

I laughed, even guffawed at parts. I blurt out “EW!” over and over. I applauded. I gasped. I scratched my head. This book had it all. And while I’m both sorry that Naomi Wolf’s mind and body has been kidnapped and replaced by an alien and that Naomi Klein has had to suffer for it, I’m glad it led to this book. And yeah, it was worth staying up all night to finish the book.

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Confinement, Fatphobia, Genocide, Hate crime, Misogyny, Slavery, Violence, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Police brutality, Religious bigotry, Fire/Fire injury, Gaslighting, Colonisation, War, and Pandemic/Epidemic

mmccombs's review

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.5

Absolutely a must read! This is my first book from Klein and I immediately feel compelled to reach for her backlist. For a fairly short-ish book, this covers so much ground while also going pretty deeply into each topic, I felt it was quite comprehensive. My only complaint was that I sometimes struggled with the organization of the book, I never quite knew where it was going, though each time we got somewhere I enjoyed myself. This is a great book for understanding where we are right now and imagining where we could be, I want to throw this book at everyone I meet!

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Ableism, Death, Genocide, Gun violence, Misogyny, Violence, Antisemitism, Grief, Religious bigotry, Colonisation, Classism, and Pandemic/Epidemic

ranocchietto's review

challenging dark informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

4.5

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Bullying, Child abuse, Child death, Death, Emotional abuse, Genocide, Gun violence, Hate crime, Mental illness, Racism, Rape, Slavery, Terminal illness, Torture, Forced institutionalization, Xenophobia, Police brutality, Antisemitism, Trafficking, Mass/school shootings, Religious bigotry, Cultural appropriation, Colonisation, War, and Pandemic/Epidemic