Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World

by Naomi Klein

(Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $30)

“The setup is absurd,” said Jacob Bacharach in NYMag.com. Author Naomi Klein, who for years was amused that she was regularly confused with fellow writer Naomi Wolf, became obsessed with her accidental celebrity double when Wolf began spouting anti-vax conspiracy theories at the height of the Covid pandemic. Previously, both Naomis could be fairly categorized as writers of the Left who wrote big-idea books—Wolf making her name with 1991’s The Beauty Myth and Klein hers with the 1999 anti-corporate tract No Logo. But as silly as Klein’s sudden Wolf fixation may seem, the resulting book is “often fascinating.” Aiming to understand how Wolf morphed into a crackpot hero of the Right, Klein has hit on a useful theory.

The Covid-era Wolf had found fresh prestige in what Klein labels the Mirror World, said Hugo Rifkind in The Times (U.K.). Media outlets such as Fox News, she says, define themselves as opponents of the cultural hegemony that had pushed Wolf to the curb when she published a 2019 book built on a bald mistake, and Wolf happily reclaimed fame by presenting a version of herself that would be embraced within that opposition world. “This is a brilliant insight,” one that explains how today’s media landscape encourages individuals to present avatars of themselves that can flourish, even while trafficking in fictions, in the political universes of their choosing. But the idea is worthy of a column, “not a book,” and this “surprisingly funny” book stretches its thesis too far.

Doppelganger doesn’t ridicule the Mirror World, said Laura Marsh in The New Republic. Instead, “its guiding question is how so many people have in recent years crossed over into a realm of ‘upside-down politics’ where facts are arbitrary and people who still advertise themselves as liberals can make common cause with conspiracists.” Klein concludes that ordinary Americans have for so long been left to grapple alone with the hardships of life that a subset of them have doubled down on individualism. To win those people back, she says, her side must do more to make ordinary lives better.