Who's afraid of the big(-haired) bad Wolf?
Naomi Klein's adventures in the 'mirror world'; a review of 'Doppelganger'
I used to have immense respect for Naomi Klein; she was the doyenne of the anti-globalist left. I have read and enjoyed most of her books, though I began to slowly part company with her on climate issues, and much more so over her endorsement of identity politics. Of her corpus, the standout book is The Shock Doctrine, which I have read twice, but that is where the central problem with Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World lies.
Klein has spent three decades chasing globalists, billionaires, Bill Gates, the WEF, etc., and even in Doppelganger, she maintains that they are the bad guys, but presented with the pandemic, and the most prominent example of the Shock Doctrine in action in global history, she pivoted and flipped to their side. In many ways, the story of Doppelganger is her (verbose and failed) attempt to justify why she didn't apply her most famous concept (accurately) in the full flowering of its perfect actualisation. The reason, it turns out, is that by the time she had recovered from the initial fear and discombobulation, deplorables had already run with it instead.
This happened in the 'mirror world', where many of the ideas, including her ideas, look the same as our world, except evil people are using them: the right, the far right, populists, fascists, wellness gurus, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, QAnon, Trump supporters etc., etc.
Klein's book uses the Freudian/literary device of the ‘doppelganger’ to launch an attack on Naomi Wolf. Since the days of the Occupy Wall Street movement, Klein has been confused with Wolf, primarily online, but sometimes in the real world. Wolf is her “big-haired” doppelganger; both critics of globalism, the WEF and billionaires, both Jewish, both famous feminists, and both with husbands called Avi. The fundamental difference is that Klein is a leftist and a firm believer in collectivism, and Wolf is a liberal and a believer in individual rights. Klein wants to destroy capitalism; Wolf does not. Throughout the book, we also learn that Klein is right and good, and Wolf is wrong and bad. Why? Because Klein says so.
Klein accuses Wolf of holding wild theories about Covid, from mRNA shedding through vaccine harms on women’s reproductive health to accusations of genocidal intent, but she never delves into these ideas; instead, it turns out, the central problem with Wolf is that she is platformed by Steve Bannon, and has appeared on the Tucker Carlson show.
These are the crimes of 'adjacency' and 'guilt by association', prominent features of modern leftist political thinking. The identitarian left is rarely interested in debating ideas but prefers to resort to ad hominem attacks, becoming obsessed with the platform, the medium, who else was present, targeting errors their opponent has made in the past, or unfashionable ideas they hold on some other subject entirely—anything to avoid having to debate the actual ideas as presented. You may think this is an unfair caricature, but in this book, Naomi Klein, Professor Naomi Klein, falls into just such an attack on Dr Naomi Wolf.
Bannon and Carlson are entirely beyond the pale for Klein. Many things are wrong with them, but chief among them is that Bannon was Trump's strategist, and Carlson is anti-abortion. We are told that Bannon is up to no good, carefully plotting and watching the progressive left and amorally stealing their best talking points and strategies for evil 'populist' appeal in the mirror world. Bannon and Carlson are Christians too, of course, so there's the blood libel, and everybody knows anyway that all conspiracy theorists are anti-Semites, even if they deny it or don't know themselves.
Klein, as already stated, is a critic of the WEF. She thinks she has scored a significant victory by pointing out that the activities of the WEF are not hidden; they advertise what they are up to on their website and in their publications. Well, quite. I could make no sense of what Klein's point is here.
By the halfway point in the book, we have learned the above, and at this point, I was hoping Klein would engage in deep penetrating political analysis, but instead, she heads off down her own rabbit holes and constructs a conspiracy theory all of her own, in an attempt to portray Wolf as fascist-adjacent.
She notes the number of wellness practitioners who became involved in criticising the lockdowns and vaccines (some of whom are undoubtedly cranks and snake oil salespeople), homing in particularly on one who made a crass and callous throwaway remark and those who talk about being naturally healthy, with strong bodies (who are probably white), and unvaccinated. From there, we’re straight into full-on Godwin territory.
Klein moves on to anti-vaxxers more generally. She has an autistic child, and she rails against those she perceives don't celebrate the fact that their child is neurodivergent with the vigour she argues (with abundant wordiness) that she does. I feel this is where the psychological heart of her book lies. Klein is somebody who apparently struggles to entertain the thought that the childhood vaccine schedule might have harmed her child, that she might have been a party to that.
Lest I sound like an old-school anti-vaxxer, I am not. I've had my Covid shots, and due to extensive travel in remote locations, I've had just about every other vaccine going. Nevertheless, some people are harmed by vaccines, just like any pharmaceutical product. I am certainly not saying that vaccines harmed Klein's child; I'm just saying that if it were my child, I would be unable to dislodge this possibility from my mind. Perhaps Klein is angry that anybody ever put it in hers? A failure to celebrate your child (something entirely imputed by Klein), to wish they were more perfect somehow, is further suggestive of a fascist mindset (as it seems is a failure to celebrate obesity).
A journey into identity politics is the next step. Contrasting a lack of interest in a protest against a pipeline across colonised native lands, Klein takes aim at the trucker's convoy and the massive public support it has received from freedom movements. Klein alleges that a leader is a white supremacist, which is sufficient to taint the rest of the truckers and their supporters with fascism and the ‘Great Replacment’ theory. Adjacency strikes again. It's whataboutery, I know, but one can't help thinking of the SS member appearing in the Canadian parliament the other day.
Anyway, QED, as far as Klein is concerned, Wolf is adjacent to fascists. I beg to differ, of course; the reason why the trucker's convoy is so famous is that if ever there was an example of the dangers of the return of fascism, it is the vaccine mandates the truckers were protesting and the moves that were taken to destroy them, the deprivation of their bank accounts and means of feeding themselves. If anybody is adjacent to fascism here, it is Klein.
Right at the end of the book, we learn another reason why Klein has spent the last three years of her life stalking her doppelganger on the internet, neglecting her family and her work by her admission; it is because she once met Wolf when she was young, and thought she was beautiful and cool ('like a pot smoking older sister'). Wolf even tried to help her get her first mainstream publication. Deep down, Klein wanted to be her doppelganger.
So, there you have it, Klein's unhinged assault on Wolf dissected. Job done. 'But, Nik', you say, 'What of Wolf? She's a nutcase, of course; Klein has won the argument at the outset, no?'
It's not incumbent on me to defend Wolf's views on vaccines because Klein has not mounted any evidenced arguments against them. Nevertheless, I will offer a few thoughts here because Wolf has a good case for many things she says.
At the outset, I will say that I couldn't care less if Naomi Wolf made a single interpretive error in an earlier book, what she has said on any other issue, nor who platforms her, nor do I care in the least what her political views are or whether or not they have changed (all of which Klein is obsessed with). The supposed moral crime of ‘adjacency’ is not something I have ever taken seriously. Those who question establishment narratives appear in controversial podcasts or each other's podcasts because the establishment media refuses to platform them. It’s as simple as that. I’m interested in discussing Wolf’s ideas and evidence in the context of the pandemic, something I think Klein should have paid more attention to in her book.
I will confess that I didn’t know much at all about Wolf until Mark Steyn was booted off GB News for platforming her. I hadn’t read any of her work at that point, nor was I a viewer of The Mark Steyn Show.
If you watch that video, you will learn far more about the ‘controversial’ medical claims Naomi Wolf has actually made than you will learn in Doppelganger, the claims that Klein thinks damn Wolf from the outset.
I learnt about Wolf’s appearance when the usual suspects were out calling for the end of GB News on Twitter (IIRC, David Aaronovitch, Otto English and, of course, Matthew Sweet, he of uncovering the error in Wolf’s book fame). In true Streisand Effect style, that piqued my interest, and I learnt that she leads the Pfizer Documents Analysis project (the documents they didn't want to release for 75 years), where 3,500 independent researchers have uncovered horrific details about the effects of the vaccine on women’s reproductive health, many of which have been confirmed by investigative journalists, operating independently of the project, for example, Sonia Elijah.
A serious writer, launching a critique of the alleged cranky views of Wolf, would provide evidence that they have read these reports and provide arguments for why they are fallacious. Klein shows no sign of having read them. The thing is, it is no longer just the reports because many things Wolf’s team found in them have been seen in the wild now. We have learnt of abnormal menstruation, vaginal bleeding in postmenstrual women, declining birth rates in heavily vaccinated countries, and mRNA shedding in breast milk. All very worrying. Klein might retort that the shedding in breast milk is not evidence of wider shedding, but is the presence of mRNA in breast milk not bad enough, in and of itself, when pregnant women were assured that the vaccine would remain in their arms? Klein pays lip service to fertility worries, gently berating the progressive left for not being more tolerant of people’s concerns before swiftly moving on.
That leaves the ‘genocidal intent’ claim. I don't want to put words in Wolf's mouth. Still, my understanding is that she reasons that Pfizer knew about these harms but made no attempt to alert pregnant or potential mothers to the risk; the FDA and CDC knew about these harms yet pushed on, so what else is she supposed to conclude here, other than it was deliberate? I hope I haven't misrepresented her in this.
We have seen many conspiracies during the pandemic. We have seen scientists conspiring to suppress the lab leak hypothesis. We have seen public health authorities conspiring to suppress early treatment protocols. We have seen governments, the security services and social media companies conspiring to suppress online dissent. We have seen Big Pharma execs conspiring to prevent the release of trial data. We have seen governments conspiring to prevent the release of vaccine contracts. We have seen public health authorities, governments and legacy media conspiring to suppress information about vaccine harms. We are seeing a conspiracy now to ignore excess deaths. I could go on, but my point is that in all cases, those alleging the existence of these proven conspiracies were themselves written off as ‘conspiracy theorists’. They are Klein’s deplorables.
The ‘genocidal intent’ seems a conspiracy too far because it goes further than any possible pecuniary or cock-up explanation and into maliciousness (as if Pharma killing people for money, which they do regularly, isn’t bad enough). How could the idea arise that there is a depopulation agenda? Well, there is the notorious Committee of 300 video, unfortunate remarks by Bill Gates, and the endless whinging and propaganda from neo-Malthusian environmentalists (e.g. Ehrlich) and the WEF to go on. You will probably have little difficulty dismissing those as pertinent. Perhaps the knowledge that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was engaged in dual-use research might persuade some. More compelling might be the forensic work of Sasha Latypova, Katherine Watt and David Martin on trials, contracts, and patents. All three may arguably be guilty of confirmation bias, but nevertheless, it is evident that we don’t yet know the whole truth about the virus, the vaccines, or the relationships between governments and Big Pharma. Speculation will always thrive in a deliberately sparse information space.
Despite all this, I still struggle to believe that a depopulation agenda is underway here, but that is more a moral intuition than anything I can evidence. Wolf, though, is entitled to her view. We still (just about) live in liberal democracies where people (allegedly) have free speech. You can laugh and ignore this claim if you think she is wrong. What is unquestionable, though, is that many have been harmed by mRNA ‘vaccines’, with serious adverse events dwarfing every other vaccine in history combined. The evidence of ongoing harm comes in daily. The work on the Pfizer reports is sufficient for me to give Wolf my support and respect here.
Whilst shunning the medical, Klein devotes considerable time to vaccine passports. I’m not sure what happened in the US or Canada, but Klein informs us that no ‘phoning home’ was involved, but claims Wolf thought they did. Here, in the UK, we had a contact tracing app, and we had a Covid Pass app. We also have blanket retention of communications data. The three data sources are easily combined to know where somebody is, who they have been in contact with, and their vaccine/health status. The WHO want this sort of information unified for the entire global population. We know from Edward Snowden that The Man can easily hack your cam or mic. Soon, your personal AI assistant will be recording even more about you.
We already have more surveillance cameras per capita in the UK than any country outside China. This is not enough, it seems, so we are bringing in facial recognition, as in China, just in case you accidentally leave your phone at home. CBDCs and biometric digital IDs are coming all over the world. Frankly, I doubt whether Wolf ever said that a Chinese-style social credit system is here already, but she was undoubtedly making a thoroughly grounded prediction for the future. [You might want to read my review of Mustafa Suleyman’s The Coming Wave for why this level of future surveillance is nearly inevitable.]
The question here is not ‘What happened to Naomi Wolf?’ but ‘What happened to Naomi Klein?’ Klein is apparently at a loss to understand why so many former comrades have defected and joined the ranks of her deplorables. Speaking for myself, it only happened just over a year ago. I think the reality is that for many, you can only put up with the constant lying and the micromanaging of your life before something snaps. I finally went and ‘did my own research’, and it didn’t take much reading before the whole edifice crumbled. More and more people now realise that they have been, are being, and will continue to be, lied to by their governments, corporations and the captive legacy media.
If we look like a ragtag bunch, it is because we are; there are people from across the political spectrum. It’s not too late to rediscover your roots and join us, Naomi. We are living through the shock doctrine on steroids. You are looking in the wrong place for fascism; it really is staring right back at you in the mirror. It’s not your doppelganger that you are seeing there.
Welcome to the ranks. DMOR since 2021. I wake up most days in utter disbelief. The levels of cognitive dissonance out there are fascinating. The extent to which people will contort themselves to avoid "going there" are only measurable by the viciousness of the ad hominem attacks that are levelled at us. And boy, I have collected them like grim trophies. From those nearest and dearest to me, moreover. Be prepared for a rough ride. There is no turning back, and you will yearn for it, every minute of every day, but know that it's impossible.
Further thought leads me to an unhappy conclusion: the same kind of don't-make-me-think-about-it response to the horror of potentially having put one's own children in danger will probably play a large role in public reluctance to be red-pilled on the danger of giving more mRNA doses to children. As Public News points out in a piece today on the CDC coverup of the danger of myocarditis to boys and young men, part of the insistence on maintaining a booster regimen for children and young people is based on not admitting that it was dangerous in the first place.