Doppelganger Through the Looking Glass

Psychological Analysis of Progressive Covid True Believers

I had not read books, listened to podcasts, or viewed webcam interviews by either Naomi Klein or Naomi Wolf, when I heard Klein interviewed on NPR about her latest book Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World, published this year. She sounded like a neurotic whiner about being repeatedly confused with Wolf. When they’re actually so different.

I monitor left wing radio when I drive. Reminds me of the summer I rented a room in the last blue collar town in the county (no longer). This weirdly bimorphic* couple held the lease, and “monitored right wing radio” in the “living room.” Not Ditto Heads, paranoid progressives. This was the 90’s, when AM spectrum spewed out a barrage of angry, white males ranting about Bill Clinton and other perverts. I never asked, but surmised it was an early warning system for pogroms.

Needless to say, I didn’t lounge in the living room, only on the 3rd floor balcony smokin’ sinsemilla. Luckily, I’d been hired to paint the exterior of the “Oldest Continuously Operating Bar west of the Continental Divide”, an hour commute away in the coastal town I’d been priced out of. The previous painter had fallen with the ladders and broken both his arms. I didn’t drink on that job. Scared straight.

Back to Doppelganger, although that Boy in the Box seems like one now. Of course, I had read about the Naomis’ careers as culture critics, widely cited and summarized in the small pond we swam laps in. Their wakes far larger, like a New River yacht swamping a canoe paddling up conspiracy creek.

Wolf crashed the glass in 1990 with her Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women, hailed as Third Wave Feminism, riding on the foam of Camille Paglia’s Sexual Personae from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson that same year, (converging at Infinity Point). Second Wave crested with Germaine Greer’s 1970, the female eunuch. Can’t say I read any of them, but name dropped them to hot feminists. When there were such anomalies.

Klein’s meteoric rise to literary media fame (a tiny flame in a stadium lighted field) began with her first book, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies in 1999, “connecting with the anti-globalization movement.” She “insisted” on a world famous designer for her book cover, a sleek, black hardcover with the non-trademarked No Logo title and her name.

Sold millions, mostly for the cover, (like Be Here Now in the 60’s, another one I only skimmed). Inside was something about the curse of Corporate Branding and Tribal Identity. I might have bought a No Logo ripoff shirt in a thrift store in South Florida, but chose the Gator Izod. My UF tribe.

I had to do some research for this series, so ordered Klein’s latest book from my county library. Something like 54 holds, an indication of NPR listeners in this deep blue district. Reading it provided enough research for this series.

After 9/11 both got hyperbolic about the coming crackdown, same as me. Wolf humped the shark with her 2007 op-ed in The Guardian, Fascist America in 10 easy steps. promoting her book The End of America: Letter to a Young Patriot. Klein came out with Shock Doctrine that same year, (or am I confusing them?)

Wolf’s three stage rocket ejection from her liberati social networks began by criticizing Israel’s 2014 bombing of Gaza, ( banished from Bard), then linking sodomy with pedophilia and state execution in Outrages in 2019, (defenestrated by lefty media), finally blasted out of their orbit entirely from headlining anti- mask and vaxx rallies in 2020. Only the latest got her shadowbanned, misinfowarningbannered, then evicted from Twitter, FB and other Big Tech platforms in 2021.

Wolf had veered into my lane of far out conspiracy reporting long before she was cancelled, while Klein’s been poolside raising her neuroatypical son since 2014, with her clarion cry about This Changes Everything, Capitalism vs the Climate. Until now, blowing her Doppelganger libwhistle like a woke lifeguard, alarmed by her brand being diluted.

Like any newbie conspiracy reporter, mistakes will be made. Not every lead is secured. Naomi Klein delights in recounting every stumble and overreach of Naomi Wolf in this murky, fathomless trench, in that sympathetic snark of the passive aggressive frenemy.

Interestingly, Klein’s book provides the perfect patient profile for dissecting the psychology of True Believer Liberal Literatis, their unshakable faith in “medical science”, “public health” and unquestioning devotion to the dogma of Received Truth from St. Tony. Stenographers not analysts.

Highly paid psychologist consultants have analyzed anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists, flaying us alive to map our nexus plexus sexus trigger points. This series will shine the mirror back on Klein as a case study of True Believers.

Klein seems especially perturbed that Wolf is more popular than her. More Likes, Followers, Audience. Some middle school scarring is mentioned. She’s serious, Wolf is frivolous. She’s Right, (meaning Left) and Wolf is Wrong, meaning Right. Labels are confusing. Liberals for Censorship. Libertarians for Vaxx Mandates. Communalists for ProPhyz.

Both Naomis were highly educated in “liberal arts” universities, nurtured by politically “progressive” networks, landing in the top quintile. Both were born into the brood, pursued its peaks through the usual grooming and pruning.

After being expelled from their tribe, Wolf dove fully nude into the covidspiracy abyss, when she grabbed the Third Rail of anti-masker, vaxxer, lockdown rhetoric. She’s been riding it like a mechanical bronco, whoopin’ and hollering’ rebel yells ever since.

Klein continues to dance with those that brung her. She both derides this primary cultural divide and describes with bafflement how the stampeding herd undercut her “progressive” values. The tribe promoted her cultural critique of antivaxxer creeps, in particular her doggerel doppelganger Wolf with this comeback book. Another designer cover, ad campaign and public radio interviews.

My Doppelganger series will be written from the other side of the Mirror World. Klein claims she peered into the ShadowLands behind it for “a master’s degree” worth of covidspiracy research during her Great Lockdown. Mostly in Canada, specifically an island off British Columbia, geolocated through her vaxxapp.