Over the past couple of decades, Naomi Klein has become one of our foremost thinkers on capitalism’s failures and the importance of a systemic overhaul to combat climate change. She also started her career with a 1999 book called NO LOGO, a prescient take on the phenomenon of “branding” that has since become even more ubiquitous.

For obvious reasons, Klein herself has resisted the notion that she has, or is, a personal “brand.” But all that started to come into question when she realized, while perusing social media, that people --- even intelligent, well-read people --- were confusing her with the person she calls “the other Naomi”: Naomi Wolf. Wolf also came to prominence in the 1990s as the author of the third-wave feminist classic, THE BEAUTY MYTH. But as Klein soon discovered to her horror, Wolf has become, particularly during the COVID pandemic, a noted conspiracy theorist, beloved by Steve Bannon and his ilk. All of a sudden, Klein began to feel threatened by those who were conflating her identity, her “brand,” with someone whose views she now found repugnant.

"Klein excels at identifying patterns and calmly and rationally exploring and explaining them.... Given the events of recent days, the book’s closing sections, culminating with a deeply personal exploration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is especially resonant."

Although DOPPELGANGER starts with this semi-amusing but increasingly ominous anecdote, things quickly expand out from Klein’s personal story. She uses this doubling to explore all kinds of doubles, shadows and mirrors, using the concept to draw parallels between and point out connections among all kinds of contemporary phenomena, including skepticism of vaccines, denialism of history, and the ongoing ravages of corporate greed.

Throughout the book, Klein illustrates how conspiracy theories like the ones Wolf has espoused serve to warp or mask the real structures of power that benefit from our willingness to look for narratives and explanations. Serious, systemic issues remain hidden or unchallenged, while silly, illogical or downright harmful narratives take their place. Even our language has developed dangerous doppelgangers, with the far right co-opting words such as “groomer” or “fascist” in ways that rob them of their power for those on the left, leaving critics like Klein “speechless.”

One of the more interesting sections of the book is on “diagonalism,” where Klein explicates the ways in which hard-line conservatives and New Age wellness and hardcore fitness devotees found surprising common ground in their shared distrust of vaccines. She explains in clear and compelling terms how these groups became unlikely but logical bedfellows, and raises questions about what other unexpected allegiances might be forged as we approach another presidential election.

Klein excels at identifying patterns and calmly and rationally exploring and explaining them. Although the topics she writes about are frightening for those who fear for a future defined by climate disaster, extreme inequality and war, the ways in which she draws connections, backed up with compelling and well-researched and -reasoned evidence, is, in an odd way, reassuring. It provides confirmation that readers who have noticed some of these phenomena are not crazy.

Given the events of recent days, the book’s closing sections, culminating with a deeply personal exploration of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, is especially resonant. Here, at last, the two Naomis find some common ground. Klein then comes to a certain kind of peace with herself about what this whole journey has meant to her own outlook, advocating “unselfing” as a way of stepping away from our extreme individualism and finding ways to heal the world together.