I knew who Naomi Klein was before I read this – I read her prior book, This Changes Everything, and gave it the reasonably high ranking of 8.5. She’s very smart and writes well, but, fwiw, has no degree backing that up. In most places this book was fascinating and kept me turning the pages for hours – more hours than what they said because I reread parts of it, sentences or sections or even whole chapters and highlighted many, many times.

Doppelganger
By Naomi Klein 
2024 / 398 pp Kindle
Read by author, 14h 47m
Rating 9 / non-fiction, “content creation
& social media”
Both read and listened.

But I was so confused in the first chapter I wondered how far I’d get. Doppelganger (a personal life double) was selected by the All-Nonfiction reading group for our April read, but I started about 2 weeks early. That way I leave time for a 2nd reading during the actual month of April.   

It seems Klein’s Doppelganger is Naomi Wolf, who, at eight years Klein’s senior, had been writing and speaking on women’s issues for several years prior to getting involved in actual politics. Now Klein was being drawn into politics and this was when Klein really started paying more attention to Wolf. People got the two women mixed up.  Klein has written nine books to Wolf’s eleven. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Wolf
https://brownstone.org/articles/an-update-from-naomi-wolf/

But Klein’s politics stayed generally left-ish, while Wolf’s moved to the right and extreme right in the political controversies after the early days of Covid-19 and the anti-vaxxer crowd grew. Those and related issues is what Klein explores from the idea that there is a line of positions on political issues which is known as “liberal” or “progressive” or maybe something else. Likewise there is a line with positions representing a range of opinions for voters on the right side of that spectrum.

Klein has developed the idea that some people take a diagonal line when they adopt the position of the opposing “side” for an issue. For instance, a person who is very health-oriented for herself and her family will suddenly buy into the conspiracy theories and become opposed to the covid vaccine and masks or whatever. Or a person who is very pro-women’s issues is suddenly a Second Amendment fan. (That’s Wolf to an extent.) –

In the book, Kliein explores a lot of fascinating history and then along comes Covid-19 and masks were a very hot issue. They were either okay or NOT okay – masks became a Fascist thing NOT a health thing. Dr Fauci was lying and Steve Bannon would tell the truth. But there were other issues during that time. There was serious bigotry which became Black Lives Matter and George Floyd. There was Jew-baiting and so on which had its own history brought to the US by immigrants. .

Klein analyzes these people and their issues through what she calls  “diagonal policies” where some “progressives” seem to take on the colors or positions of the “conservatives,” but it could go back to socialists vs fascists or hawks vs doves from the days of Vietnam lies and protests.

There has to be a greater cause –  now there has to be a greater cause for people to switch –  I suppose that happened then too.  

Chapter 6 –  Wolf’s turn:  9/5/23 and this is a great review from New Republic:
https://newrepublic.com/article/175254/naomi-klein-naomi-wolf-doppelganger-journey-unnerving-world

Chapter 10 is fascinating “Autism and the Anti-Vax Prequel”.  There’s a lot of history re autism and fascism/Nazism here Klein’s sources look good.  The thing is that Klein’s own son is autistic and she was involved with the folks who believed that rumor. She is Jewish and that has its own bag of rumors about them and spread by them.

Doppelganger is somewhat lengthy and it lost its charm a few times, but it always refreshed. I think I’d like to read it again – we’ll see.