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MIRROR, MIRROR, BUILD THE WALL  
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David Duhalde
August 4, 2024
Democratic Left
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_ Naomi Klein’s latest book explores how her “Doppelganger”,
Naomi Wolf, embraced far-right conspiracies. Their divergent paths
contain lessons for socialist organizing today. _

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Naomi Klein’s latest publication, _Doppelganger, _comes from the
author’s new interest in the impact of conspiracy theories inspired
by the public’s ongoing confusion of herself with dis-informer Naomi
Wolf. Klein uses these mix-ups to examine how the anti-solidaristic
conspiracy theories Wolf champions create barriers to building a left
mass movement. Democratic socialists can change the world through
building coalitions — even coalitions that might be uncomfortable at
times — but those coalitions must keep our universal values, center
mass politics over individual action, and fight disinformation.

In the present, the author, a democratic socialist, has politics
nearly opposite of Wolf, a right-wing darling and conspiracy theorist.
Klein is best known for her anti-corporate scholarship such as the
1999 book _No Logo_ and, more recently, for climate activism. Wolf,
on the other hand, used to be a rising liberal writer who covered
issues such as unfair beauty standards and served as an advisor to Al
Gore’s 2000 presidential campaign on how to reach women voters, but
Wolf has since retreated or been exiled, depending on your point of
view, rightward from the center-left. When her own scholarship on gay
men being executed in Victorian Britain was debunked
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she spiraled — partly due to nasty online backlash — and shifted
her personal brand away from her stated principles. 

Klein cites a Rutgers University communicator scholars Jack Bratich to
explain how Wolf’s (and conversely liberalism’s) lack of
structural analysis (like a socialist has) not only limits her
worldview, but makes it possible for her to become reactionary despite
her stated liberal principles:

“Liberal investments in individualism resulting in thinking of power
as residing in individuals and groups rather than structures. Without
analysis of capital and class they end up defaulting to the stories
the West tells itself about the power of individuals to change the
world. But hero narratives easily flip into villain narratives.”

Wolf is a paragon of this flip. She twisted feminist ideals used to
support reproductive rights into supporting anti-masking and
anti-vaccination
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Or another example of her about-face relevant for today’s
geo-political headlines: Wolf publicly condemned the Israeli massacres
in Gaza in 2014, but now, a decade later, as deadly attacks on
Palestinians occur daily, condemnation has been replaced
with esoteric
[[link removed]] conspiracy
[[link removed]] theories
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Despite their differences, Klein’s book posits that she and Wolf’s
similarities as two anti-establishment Jewish women authors have
turned them into Doppelgangers – literally “double-walkers.” As
bizarre replicas of the other, their different politics means their
audiences exist in two “Mirror Worlds.” Where Klein’s lends to a
left-wing activist audience, Wolf’s evolution from Jewish liberal
(although not radical) feminist with sympathies to Palestinians to a
COVID hoax truther allying with far-right figures such as former
Donald Trump advisor Stephen Bannon highlights how an
anti-establishment worldview does not necessarily translate into
progressive action. 

Bannon quickly embraced Wolf despite her liberal views because she
could be counted on to spew the toxic rhetoric that undermined a
humane response to COVID. MAGA types such as Bannon know their base is
built through the fear of others, not through commitment to universal
values. For MAGA, as long as a person can serve to stoke divisions
along reactionary lines, they are welcome into the coalition,
regardless of their other ideas. Critically, Wolf does not change MAGA
– it changed her. While she came in with conspiracy theories, Klein
chronicles how Wolf has changed her other values, such as weakening
her stance on abortion access (saying the overturning _Roe_ was
acceptable because of state rights) and embracing gun culture.

Wolf’s actions, alongside her collaboration with Bannon, cause me to
wonder if it is too simple to think of our opponent’s followers as
just stupid. These far-right pundits can shove a terrifying narrative,
especially during a scary pandemic, that manipulates human fear and
genuine concerns about government overreach. Underfunding of the
public sector and decades of neoliberalism have created a society
where people do not trust that the state can deliver even basic
services. Furthermore, the neoliberal agenda, including the
destruction of unions, has weakened social solidarity. In a climate of
distrust, individuals greet even successful programs with suspicion.
They may ask, in one unforgettable anecdote in the book, if the
vaccine was so good, why was it free? In today’s capitalist society,
everything good must have a price. Sadly, an example of free
life-saving healthcare being distributed by the government does not
automatically win the masses over to socialized medical care.

But are average folks like this because they are just “fools”? I
doubt it. As Klein articulates, the more likely explanation is that
individuals are increasingly siloed and do not hear alternative
viewpoints. The erosion and destruction of civil society has an
anti-democratic impact. Many are victims of the massive disinformation
campaign conducted by the likes of Wolf and Bannon on his talk show
“War Room” and many other MAGA programs. She and he are cynical
villains – they certainly are not stupid. They also surely know much
of what they say are falsehoods in service of a greater political
agenda, one that makes them a lot of money. Popular progressive
movements without the funding of the uber wealthy cannot reach the
millions who might be open to our frames and solutions as easily as
MAGA does. 

According to Klein, while liberals can be focused in good ways on
combating injustice and inequity, they rely too much on individualism.
The liberal definition of conspiracy theories treats any understanding
that different groups have conflicting interests — and may come
together to pursue those interests — as equivalent to fear mongering
about the Illuminati, which precludes a socialist framework of
analysis. Socialists, like Klein, look at exploitation and see its
solutions through collective struggle and structural change. These
liberals can be too quick to dismiss real descriptions of class
conflict as conspiracy theories. 

However, this is obviously not Wolf’s problem: her definition of
conspiracy theory is under- rather than over-inclusive. She still
represents the worst extreme of liberalism’s individual focus. She
accepts the idea that groups can be in conflict — but attributes the
conflict to evil ideas held by individual conspirators, not
conflicting material interests. This liberal worldview also rests on
the notion that ideas, not material forces like organized people,
drive historic change. A major difference between Wolf and Klein, at
least according to Klein, is that Wolf believes that ideas — the
plots of evil cabals, or her own work exposing them — change the
world. 

But Klein does not deny the existence of conspiracy. For Klein,
capitalism is a conspiracy, except capitalists act in the open. She
rejects the well-intentioned definition that conspiracy theories are
beliefs “that certain events or situations are secretly manipulated
behind the scenes by powerful forces with negative intent”. Klein
says it is a conspiracy _theory_ only if such manipulation is
non-existent. Klein sees this inaccuracy in the definition of
conspiracy theory as an illustration of the limits in liberalism.

Klein describes her own break from this idealism with the similar
revelation of environmentalist Bill McKibben’s shift from believing
that books transform the world to believing that movements of people
do. As a democratic socialist, Klein views her written work as giving
activists and others political tools. She rejects the idea that social
shifts result from moving hearts and minds. Instead, we must build
coalitions that will make a transition to a better world possible. For
Klein, democratic socialism is that better world.

Klein has been sympathetic to democratic socialism for some time but
explores it in greater depth in her new book. Her 2007 book _The
Shock Doctrine_ did express sympathy to democratic-socialist projects
such as the Popular Unity coalition in early 1970s Chile.
In _Doppelganger_, Klein explicitly calls for democratic socialism as
an answer to social and economic problems. For Klein, building
democratic socialism is creating reforms through social democracy to
establish a society that puts care at the center. This means not just
establishing the democratic ownership of the means of production but
also structural reforms to address inequalities caused by racism,
sexism, and other forms of bigotry.

Klein gives Red Vienna as evidence that a better world is possible.
Between the two world wars, the Austrian city was governed by the
left-wing Social Democratic Workers party. This democratic-socialist
party instituted policies around public health and social housing that
made the lives of the working-class measurably better. This period did
not end at the ballot box. Instead, native fascism (and then Nazi
Germany) took over Austria and ended this socialist experiment. But
its legacy continues. In 2022, a few Democratic Socialists of
America members of the New York state legislature
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Vienna’s social housing, which continues to operate decades after
the defeat of the fascism.

Klein also discusses the New Democratic Party (NDP) in Canada, her
home country. Her family helped found the party, and she describes it
as “one time proudly socialist.” She chronicles her partner’s
run as a NDP candidate in 2021. His own progressive candidacy and
activism could not win over former NDP voters that felt abandoned by
the party and turned right. Some voters were not leaving because the
platform had not provided a good left alternative, as was Klein’s
criticism of the NDP, but because the social-democratic party was not
standing up to “globalists” (code for Jewish people) or because it
supported masking during COVID. 

Some might blame this shift on identity politics. Klein instead
contends that the NDP and other socialist organizations (plus the Left
in general) are not providing a worldview and solution that resonates
with enough voters. One reason: massive disinformation peddled by the
ilk of Wolf and Bannon. But the answer to the far right is not our own
form of propaganda. Instead, we must build people power through
uniting groups around issues, legislation, and campaigns.

Pursuing democratic socialist policies and principles help dissipate
the power of this misinformation. For example, organized labor has
been proven to at least reduce racism and prejudice of unionized
workers through collective struggle and mutual interest. As these
voluntary associations decline, the social base of people socialists
seek unfortunately may not interact with socialist or even progressive
ideas. It creates a recursive problem, where worker power declines,
suppressing opportunities for alternative viewpoints to proliferate,
and then the  entire media ecosystem has been designed to further
divide workers and minimize their power.

Since groups such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) are
likely not going to have the hundreds of millions of dollars and media
empires like the right-wing noise machine, we need to do what they
often don’t: talk to people different from us. I see this especially
through housing work done by DSA chapters that reach tenants and those
struggling with evictions that would not regularly come into contact
with a socialist organization. Our activism doesn’t necessarily turn
these renters into socialists. But our mass work helps them see how
socialists fight back. Such interactions also give us an opportunity
to provide systematic explanations of the housing crisis. These
counter the typical frame of individual failures our society instills
in those facing evictions.

The route Wolf took is not one anyone on the left should emulate, but
one aspect of her actions is worth embracing: building with others who
are different from you. Klein articulates this best here:

Change requires collaboration and coalition, even (especially)
uncomfortable coalitions. Mariane Kaba, a longtime prison abolitionist
who has done as much as anyone to imagine what it would take to live
in a world that does equate safety with police and cages, puts the
lesson succinctly, one passed on to her by her father: “Everything
worthwhile is done with others.”

Wolf’s mistake was that she adopted reactionary views without ever
moving new allies towards her few remaining good beliefs. 

Building such coalitions is more an art than a science. Comrades can
have sincere disagreements about boundaries. For example, should we
let business groups seeking to eliminate their healthcare costs into a
Medicare for All effort? There are good arguments for and against
letting corporations into such an alliance. But a lesson from this
book is that making change requires working with people who will not
have perfect politics. There will be uncomfortable coalitions on the
road to democratic socialism.

_David Duhalde is a member of New York City DSA and Chair of the DSA
Fund, DSA’s sister 501c3 educational nonprofit._

_Democratic Left is the magazine of the Democratic Socialists of
America. Signed articles do not necessarily express the position of
the organization._

* Naomi Klein
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* conspiracy theories
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* alt right
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* Liberalism
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* socialism. democratic socialism
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