FOR YEARS, THE WRITER AND ACTIVIST WAQM] KLEIN HAS BEEN, CONFUSION WITH ANGH NEW BooK, FAMOUS To EXPLORE THE MIXED-UP POLITICS OF THE COVID ERA. NOTIN HER NAME By Jennifer Szalai / Photograph by Grant HarderIN JUNE, the Canadian journalist and activist Naomi Klein was sitting in the dark gray booth of a recording studio in Lower Manhattan. Dressed simply for the New York City heat — white linen top. light eropped pants, white sneakers ~ she was reading from a script, and there was a line that was giving hera bit of trouble. “I think those people should die," Klein said, her voice rising on the “should” affecting tone that might be called breezy high dudgeon — think wellness inluencer issuing a death sentence. The ditector, whose voice was being piped into Klein's headphones from the control booth, told| her to do it agin, this time keeping her intonation steady and even. Klein repeated the line as instructed, wich made what she was saying sound ‘more ominous: “I think those people should dic” Although Klein had technically written the line the grisly words werent, hers; hey were uttered bya woman who lives in Klein’s"hippy-dippy West Coast community" in British Columbia, in response othe suggestion that Govid.19 could be lethal to people with compromised immune systems I's a1seene that appears about halfway through Klein’s ninth book, “Doppel _ganger” which will be published this month, and Klein had been recording the audiobook version over the course ofthe week. “Oh, that chaptex:” Klein had said when we arrived atthe studio that ‘morning and were told thatthe day’s reading would start with “The Far Right Meets the Far-Out” She sounded ready but not especially enthusiastic, Later, alter narrating her own trenchant account of how a woo-woo fix tion on individval wellness had combined with a cruel fixation on natural scletion to make fora weird fascist New Age alliance,” Klein stopped for abreak. “Jennifer” she called out tome, “you came for sucha cheery pat From the time Klein published her fst book, “No Logo,” in 1999 — a critica look at corporate branding that was fortitously released just days after protests roiled a meeting ofthe World Trade Organization in Seattle ~ she has been one ofthe most influential figures on the English-speaking lef Her2007book, “The Shock Doctrine” argued that a ruthless neoliberal agenda has historically ben foisted on traumatized populations during crises; itwas a radical ertique that, with the global financial isis the following year, moved from the margins toward the mainstream. Whether \wrtingbestselling books, speaking at Occupy Wall Street, being arrested at an ant-pipeline protest or eampaigning for Bernie Sanders, Klein has remained indefatigable and on message. Capitalism generates weakth for the few by exploiting the many. I is wrecking the planet, Only solidarity will ge us through, “Doppelganger” isa different kind of book for Klein; more intimate and personal, shot through with atype of ambiguity that isn’t much of a presence in her earlier work. Where her previous targets have been falar villains — greedy corporations, merciless capitalist, fossil fuel compa nies, the economist Milton Friedman — her adversaries in "Doppelganger" reflect the ideological chaos ofthe lat few years billionaire tech tycoons, Danwinist yoga moms, xenophobic propagandists and... Naomi Wolf? ‘Wolf isthe doppelganger ofthe books title ~ the feminist intellectual who wrote the classe text “The Beauty Myth” which argued that beauty standards serve as a form of socil eontra, and a person whom people ‘0 a2 hhave been confusing with Klein for atleast a dozen years. “‘Doppelgang: er” opens with a scene in a public bathroom near the Occupy protests in 20u1, when klein overhears some women misattibuting to her some: ‘thing Wolf had sid, But it was during the isolation ofthe Covid pandemic that being chronically mixed up with Wolf, or*Other Naomi” went fron amusing to utterly bewildering. Inthe spring of 202, Other Naomi started Aoating the conspiratorial fietion that vaecinated people might somehow cendanger the unvaccinated, Wolf was suspended from Twitter ip June oat; despite sel-identifying asa “liberal democrat” she was becoming, ‘frequent guest on Tucker Carlson's Fox Neves show and Steve Bannon's “War Room’ podcast. ‘But it would be a mistake to say that “Doppelganger” is “about” Wolf, ‘who servesas Klein’sentry into what she eallsthe “mirror world” —arealm ‘both familiar and strange, where the ant-establishment critiques of the far left become co-opted bythe fr right, and where what once seemed like a yawning gulf between ostensible opposites has narrowed into a tenuous line. She meets neighbors in sola-paneled homes who switched allegiances Fromehelel-wing partyin Conada vo the insurgent fright party, “without so much asa pit top” at anything in the middle. She encounters bizarre ‘lend ofimmigrant-hating, conspiracy-mongering, electric-cr-diving and supplement haveking. The inhabitants of the mirror world are so intensely dubious of anything the establishment say that their reaction to restrictions luring a deadly pandemic isto want to bur everything down, People were losing their political bearings, and none of it made sense Klein had spent a lifetime analyzing the dominant power as oligarchie: relentless, resolute, delivered from on high, She was used to connecting, dots, to mapping out cause and effect inthe capitalist system ~ from Hurricane Katrina to proliferating charter schools; from Sept. 11 to the “homelnd security industry” Bu it was beeomingincreasingly hard for her to map out what she was secing let alone plot it on the old left-right axis. Here was a grass-roots movernent that was demanding not egalitarianism, ‘but nativism; not solidarity, but discord, Klein wastrapped inside a hall of mirrors and she was trying to find a way out Before writing about her doppelganger, Klein fet stuck For me,itsvery hard to disentangle writer's block from depression” she told me, remem: bering the "sense of pointlessness” she felt as the pandemic continued to agrind on. “I think my erash was in the early months ofthe Biden admin: istration and realizing that there was going o be an attempy to return 10 the same old same ol” Social media also seemed tobe getting ever more poisonous. Her friend V, the playwright formerly known as Eve Ensler, recommencled that Klein ak to the fiction writer Harriet Clark, who also teaches erative writing. Klein told her what she was going throughe"Lused tolill notebooks, you know, everywhere I went Now [jus feel unsurprised Clark assigned readings ike Joan Didion’s “On Keeping a Notebook to encourage Klein to consider new ways of writing and noticing. At the time, Kein was arranging a move from New Jersey, where she had been teaching at Rutgers University to British Columbia, where she had been staying sine the early days ofthe pandemic and where her parents and brother live. Covid was still raging. and all the planning hal to be done remotely. As an exercise, she wrote a personal essay about choosing ‘what to keep and what to leave behind. Klein, whois 53, laughed as she recalled the artifacts of her former life, "Who was that person who had that many pairs of high heels and tights? Like, tights?” she joked. The germ of the book was there, she realized now, even though she hadn't Fecognized itat the time. "It was about how many selves we have in our lives, and just how mutable itis. ‘Compared with the single mindedness afer previous work. ja“Doppel: -ganger” Klin hasallowed some ofthese selves to come through, Much ofthe ‘books funny and playful, laced with references to fiction and films, includ ing an extended (and attentive) reading of the novel “Operation Shylockin which Philip Roth meets a double who call himself Philip Rath. Some ‘unintentional comedy comes from Wol's bailing wets about “vaccines w ‘nanopattiles that lt you travel back n time" and the need to protect “gen eal sewage supplies/ waterways” from “vaccinated people's urine/feces” ‘And then there’ the rank absurdity ofthe Klein/ Wolf mix-up. Yes, the two women are Jewish: both have brownish-blondsh hair both have writ ten bigridea books: both have been outspoken about abuses of political power during times of crisis. But their bodies of work are distinctive, and the association between them became ever more troubling to Klein as ‘Wolf hegan tweeting “pulpy theories” about 5G, about weird clouds, The confusion was widespread enough to be commemorated in a viral poem: ifthe Naomi be Klein you're doing just fine Ifthe Naomi be Wolf ‘Oh, buddy. Oooo. Asmuch as Klein reeled at what Wolf was saying. she also fet the sting of recognition. Klein recalls the uncanny spectacle ofeeinga version of her stems-level thesis in “The Shock Doctrine” — tha elites will take advan: tage ofa criss to impose their will ~ twisted by the likes of Wolf, who has deseribed Covid as “a much-hyped medical ris” that “has taken on the role of being used asa pretext to strip us ll of eore freedoms” Klein became both obsessed and repulsed, fascinated and appalled“ felike she had taken my ideas, fel them into a bonkers blender and then shared the “WAS THE TROUBLE THAT I, AND MANY OTHERS ON THE LEFT, HAD BEEN TOO TIMID AND OBEDIEND WEIS GONE THE COVID BRAN 1G TOO READILY WITH PANDEMIC MEASURES THAT OFFLOADED so MUCH ONTO INDIVIDUALS?" thought-purve with Tucker Carlson, who nodded vehemently” She always knew when Other Naomi had said something truly mind-boggling because her~ Klein's — Twitter mentions would illu. \iaan email, Wolf declined to ‘comment on “Doppelganger” explaining that she hadnt yet read the book, but said that some of her tweets “were poor art of what distressed Klein about the Naomi confusion was that, asthe author of “No Logo, she recognized that this identity criss resembled a branding crisis, Klein sartedtoaskherselfuncomfortable questions about which part of the mirror world might count as hers. fterall, she had long, argued that some conspiracies ave real ~ not the florid fantasies of peso phils sings in pizzeria basements, but the banality of capitalists and theit allies in government doing ther thing. In Chile, the C.L.A. dd help bring «down the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allen dl: in the Gul of Mexico, BP did pursue profits by cutting corners, which led to the Deepwvater Horizon ol sill of 2010, Whether or not you agree ‘withthe conclusions Klein draws, she s assiduous when it comes to her reporting and research, Yet now she was seeing how bedrock approaches cofhers —abeliefin the power ofthe “shock doctrine" and the importance ‘of pattern recognition” — could be deployed ina way that she found not nly annoying but also abhorrent ‘Klein was picking up on a phenomenon that goes well beyond her own, ‘thought — there is tradition on the radical left when it comes to mis- ‘rusting the system, and a tradition on the radical right for seizing on that ‘mistrust when they ean Insurgents onthe far right have taken inspiration from the left-wing activist Saul Alinsky. Trump supporters have chalked ‘up his legal woes to machinations by federal lw enforcement and the “deep state” In mid-August conspiracy theorists falsely asserted thatthe wildfires tearing through Maui were caused by space lasers inorder to give the government the pretext it needed to impose climate-riendly policies, ‘But for Klein, her doppelaiinger trouble brought this ideological fre: forall uneasily close. In literature andar, doubles have long been cultural signifies ofthe parts of ourselves that we would referto ignore or repress reminders that something crucial is beng denied, As Other Naomi seemed 1 grow ever more emboldened, Kin started to doubt herself: "Were the ‘ways {have asked people to be suspicious of power during moments of shock feeding into this mushrooming of conspiracies?” ein’ strip through the looking glass was especially clsorienting for some: ‘one whose political education started so early. She was born in Montreal in 1970 and describes herself asa “third-generation letst” Her paternal grandfather, an animator (in charge of Donald Duck continuity” she says) ‘was blacklisted after he helped organize a strike at Disney in 1941; he ‘parents left the United States for Canada in the late 1960s, because her Father had been drafted into the Vietnam Wat: ‘She was initially turned off by her parents’ selrighteousness,“l think she probably fele propagandized by us” says her mother, Bonnie Sherr Klein, a feminist filmmaker and disability activist. “We were very com- mitted to the things that we were committed to, And we were probably judgmental of people who didn't share ourbelies” Naomi also bridled at “the kumbaya, as Bonnie putsit “She hated the way T dressed and the way iy fiends dressed. My friends were hippie feminists, you know. And she ‘was embarrassed by that” ‘When Naomi was 17, her mother had the fis of two severe stokes, and any feelings of eenage estrangement yielded to the need forthe family to ‘com together, 198, when Naomi was in her Rist year atthe University ‘of Toronto,a gunman killed 14 women at what was hen the eae Polytech ‘nique in Montreal. She hadn't called herselfa feminist before: the massucre ‘turned her nto an activist ike her older brother, Seth. “From that moment ‘on? Seth Klein says, "Wwe ended upas colleagues” They id some organizing together, though he says that her “polities was always a a writer” At one point when fas with her, someone was praising the range of her work, and ‘Klein laughed. “Alte something for everyone to hate? she said Haters are an incvitability, perhaps, for someane who writes about polit ically charged subjects while delaring he ideology and how radical iis. “Td say I'm a democratie feminist eco-socalsc” she says, conceding i's ‘a mouthful. "'m wating for someone to come up with a beter brand” ‘Conservative eiticspoint tolines she wrote more than a decade agoas evi «dence that Klein mast never be trusted, In "The Shack Doctrine” she included somcleged but hopeful remarks about Hugo Chiver's decentraizing power in Venezuela easly mockableinlightofthe rampant (Cntandon age 3) The New York Tres Magazine acorruption, economic collapse and humanitarian clisaster that followed, She has since eondemned the country’sautocraie-petro-populsm”) Bat the vwrath of the right is one thing ~ a predictable battle ifyou'reademocrati feminist eco-socialis. The widening ideological gyre means that fault fines have opened upon te lef to. snger.” she points out how eager ard right has been to weleome selfident fied lefiists on hoard who depict themselves as politically homeless” truth tellers, kicked out bya movement that betrayed is ideals, “These exiles from progressivism package themselves not as defeetors, bu as loyalists ~ i's thet for mer comrades and colleagues, they claim, whore the impostor, the fakes” She puts Wolf to this category. Robert F Kennedy Jr who announced his presidential un in Api is another example Klein, whose 11-year-old son is neuradivergent, finds Kennedy's antivax views odious (Kenne dlyhas long promoted the discredited beliet that ‘vaccines eaise autism), yet ina column for The (Guardian, she also warmed that par of what makes his candidacy so dangerous s his appeal to some clsaffectd leftists, By railing against pandemic fiecring and endless wars, "hes speakin inguage, and its hard not to nod along: ‘Sl Klein is reluctant to give credence tothe so-called horseshoe theory, which states thatthe textremes of the far left and the far right have enough in common that they almost touch, In ‘Doppelganger” she cites the work of Quinn Slobodian and William Callison on what they call “diagonal de up ‘of people who combine hippie notions of wel ress and spirituality and far-right beliefs about individual control Unlike horseshoe, diagonal passes through the middle Slobodan told me that what unites the diagonals isnt just thei suspicion of power: i's also that their demands fiwithin the wellworn grooves of individualism, thecap- entrepreneurship and sel promotion itlist virtues, that is. This is where things started to click for Klein ‘Washer disaster capitalism eritique really impli cated in this new form of raging against the and this possiblity worried me ‘machine! “Or more —was the trouble that.and many others on the lft, had been too timid and obedient during the Covi era? Hadwe gone along oo readily with pandemic measures that offloaded so much onto individuals? And had we failedto foreefillytake on the eorporate greed that has run rampant in this period?” Klein recalls how in 2020 she reported an artcleabout pandemic proftering by tech com: panies, only to start seeing mirror-workd fantasies Aeclaring that Big Tech nt only exploited the par ‘demic but also manufactured it. And so, worried about “fecding intothe whirring conspiracy mil Klein backed off."Not completely, but 00 much nother words,asshe scesit, the trouble wasn't that her warnings about disaster capitalism were ripe material for Wolf and other eonspiraey the: ‘orists to ape, however elumsily ic was that Klein and other leftists had, during Covid, ot gone far tenough in pushing against that system, allow ing the far right to fill inthe anti-establishment vacuum. Among the many differences between hherand Wolf she underscores one as fundamen: ‘al Unlike te anticapitalis, ist Klein, “Wolfs liberal who never had critique of capital” And so clsilusonment with the system left Other Naomi ‘unmoored. “The system rigged: Klein maintains — “but without a fmm understanding of eat isms drive to ind new profe sources to enclose and extract, many willimagine there isa cabal of ‘uniquely ners ndvidvas pulling the strings: And with that, Klein emerged from the mirror ‘world and landed in her comfort zone twas the [Kind of tidy tn that pat mein min of another mirror image: her brand isin crsis/her brand is strong. The parts of Doppelganger” that fscint- cede the most werethe anes that were explorto: rand full of ambivalence. wanted hertocontinue ‘with her inquiry instead of hort-cireuitng i. But 1s much of an outlier as this new book is fr her, Klein still writing to mobilize. Tvealwayscalled my writing ammo for activists she tld me er doppelginger was a signal that there wasa problem, and she decided mus be this Instead of being so cautious and apprehensive, she need ced to double down, For the last wo yeas, Klein has been professor in the University of British Columbia's geogra phydepartment, where she also helps lead anew Center for Climate Justice — an appointment that was announced the same summer that @ deadly “heat dome” descended on the normal temperate Pacific Northwest, arming forests into kindling and killing more than Goo people in British Columbia, many of them elderly resi dents in their homes. In early Jly, I traveled to see Klein, who lives with her husband, the journalist and filmmaker Avi Levis, and their son.on the Sunshine Coast, which i abouttheee hours from Vancouver by ear and ferry just stankof the worst —" ein started saying, Sort of lke rancid seafood: Klein and her sister-in-avy, Christine Boyle a Vancouver city councilor, were recalling the putrid smell of decaying marine animals, wich the heat dome had cooked to death, couldn't go into the water” Klein sai, People Dogs got sick" We were sitting in Christine an Seth's backyard in East Vancouver; i'sa neighborhood where the main commercial drag hasan anarchist bookstore (explosive tiles. since 1973" right next doortoa community policing center, which areboth eater-orner from FIND LOVE 1HIG2 A CEO Coa} Sane ts SELECTIVE K sEARCH CLT LP RPL lo} Bee evan TsKin aimed fs Pa a sushi restaurant, They talked about how even the country’s progressive governments were too ‘imi, ro hemmed in by earbon pricing and tax credits Sethisthe author of “A Good War” a book calling fora World War I-evel mobilization inthe face of global warming, "Partolthis comes backto Naomi's writing over the years” he tok me, “the legacy of neoliberalism, And that legacy is like sa intellectual sritjacket around how governments ofall political stripes think about their choices” In"Doppelganger’ Klein draws links between climate denalism and the conspiracy theories oF the mirror world, where panic about ‘pandemic lockdowns” matted into panie about “climate lockdowns” Even before Govid, Wolf was tweet: ing out warnings that a Green New Deal would amount to a power grab by elites ~ “a sort of ‘green shock doctrine" as Klein ptsit, which eft Klein speechless. Similarto what she hopedat the start ofthe pandemic ~ that by showing ws how connected weallae, it could lead to "something better, greener and fairer” — she was initially raven tothe subject of global warming because ots redistribative potential. The more complex the ersis, the harder iis to solve through tech: rnoctatic fixes that allow the system to continue to operateas usual As she putt in “This Changes Everything” which was published in 2014, the climate crisis could serve as a “people's shock” and a "galvanizing force for humanity ‘Yet galvanizing forees can havea way ofbeing surprisingly divisive. In “Doppelganger” Klein deseribes how the narrative of climate justice — that this emergeneyissurvivable only if everyone works together ~ is at risk of being supersed: ed by its mirror opposite: Some of us ean get through the end times by hunkering down with our solar panels and canned food while other peopl, the most vulnerable among us gure it tut for themselves. rsa view thathasa pandem: ie equivalent: “think those people should die “Tiss survival ofthe fites taken to its chiling extreme, Klin calls ita "comfort with culling” But thiskind of extravagant cruelty is only part of the problem, as Klein found in 2015, when she and Lewis helped organize the Leap Man- ifesto, which addressed fossil-fuel production in Canada. The manifesto argued thet gradual reforms weren't enough in the face of a cata- clysm Itwasan intervention that didn't go over well with everyone. In Alberta, where the eco- logically calamitous tar sands have brought in enormous amouints of revenue, the premier at the time, Rachel Notley, dismissed the manifesto as"naive“illinformed’ and “tone-deaf” Notley also happened to be ~ and sill is — amember of the left-leaning New Democratic Paty in which Lewis’ father and grandfather played key led ership roles, (Lewis himself ran for Parliament asan N.DP. candidate in 2021, inereasing the party's vote share in his district but coming in third.) Notley is now the leader ofthe opposition inalberta; ina mirror-world flip the province's ‘current premier, Danielle Smith, i a farright former radio talk-show host who likened being vaccinated against Covid to supporting Hitler. (Smith has since apologized.) For all of Klein’s blistering critiques of right: wing conservatives, isthe liberal moderates who elicitin her a particular frustration. Last year, she wrote that the Biden administration had to be “dragged kicking and sereaming into passing the Inlation Reduction Act ~ flawed as itis" The LRA isthe biggest climate legislation in American history, gatmering comparisons t0 the Green New Deal, but inan emailto me, Klein ‘maintained it isn't enough: "We eat alford t0 celebrate half measures in an emergency" This has been a consistent talking point in her work that inerementalism is not just insufficient but ‘often damaging. In"Doppelganger” she declares that the political chaos ofthe last several years is partly the fault of eentrists who sound the alarm pout problems like climate change but then fal toact accordingly. "One form of denialism feeds theother’ she writes. “The outright cenialism in the Mirror World is made thinkable by the base fine war on words and meaning in more liberal parts of our culture If there's one thing she admires about the cliagonalists in the mirror world, i's that they dlon't feel constrained by the stats quo. “We should stop treating a great many human-made systems — like monarchies and supreme courts and borders end billionaires ~ as immutable tnd unchangeable.” she writes toward the end ‘of Doppelganger"inhortatory mode, "Because everything some humans created can be changed by other humans. And if our present systems threaten life to its very core, and they do then. they must be changed: You don't have to be a complacent liber alto think that the implications of this can be simultaneously inspiring and troubling. Replace “monarchies and supreme courts” with "the 2020 election and civil rights laws” and you might end ‘upwith aguest spot on Bannon's podeast. I's not as if Klein refuses to recognize how entangled ‘our political moment is. Het book raises some profoundly thorny questions, and she willtalk at length about al the considerations and complica tions that ean come into play on given political issue, Klein the writer might be willing ive in ‘thatambiguous space fra time; Klein the activist will not stay there. The most rousing parts of Doppelganger” maybe very much on-brand, but they can leo blunt the complexity of her insights, As she herself says in the book, "Brands are not built to contain our multitudes” “Lmade_a pledge ro mysefafong time ago that I would not spread despair” Klein told me. I's not as if despairing about the state ofthe world is unfathomable to her. “But if and when I do, Iwill stay home,” she said. “Iwill nt spread it around, [will not go on a speaking tour to tell everybody that theres no hope, Because that is a selfing prophecy. Despairis contagious ‘We were hiking ona forest trail near her son’ schoolon te Sunshine Coast, Walking with uswas ‘lens friend Kara Stanley, while Klein scackapoo was scampering nearby wth Stanley's brown lab mix. During the pandemic. Klein and Stanley. who had been working on a book, too, took weekly hikes together. There were also recent bea sight ings on the wails, and as Klein put it eassuringly to me, a bear phobic city person, Stanley “has a ‘more intimidating dog thant do” If despair is contagious then the psychological turin Klein's work might he seen as her attempt to stop the spread. She teaches « course at the University of British Columbia called “Ecological Affect? about what she calls “elimate feelings, and coursing under the dark comedy and buoyant calls to action of her new book there ae eurrents of grief Loss that isn't acknowledged can curdle ito something else ~ eynicism, for instance, or the kind of resentment that festers into hateful rage. For all the conservative dismissals of snow: flakes and liberal tears, in “Doppelganger” Klein shows how the far ight has carved outa space for negative emotions, seizing on peopk's grievances and telling them whom to blame: “Conspiracy theorists get the fets wrong, but often get the elings igh” ‘There isa paradox ta how much attention her new book pays toward the self. Kiein’s work has long been explicitly oriented around structures and systems, and here she was, making spac for the varieties of individual experience. Yet the varieties of individual experience ended up reaffirming what she already knew abou those structures and systems. “There isa really radical change in how we speak and what our assump- tions are," she granted, “But sometimes I feel like tha’ only allowable because the chances of changing itare less. So it’, OK, you can all have your anticapitalist talk? But then, you know, iF you tr to organize your Starbucks, you're going toget fired” (On our hike, we arrived ata clearing, where we could see the remains ofa pickup truck’sbed, its red metal eareass overgrown with weeds. As wwe got closer, Leould sce a couple of graft tags and a smear of red paint on the tailgate nearly covering up what had been written underneath Klein told me that someone serawled “NO VAX" onthe truck couple of years ago, but then lone day she saw that the wordshad been covered lover, She later learned that her husband was the ‘one cover up the message, The anti-vaxxer was probably stil in their community, presumably. tunbowed and unvaccinated. Painting over the problem wasatiny improvement that didn’t get tothe root of anything. But it did make things ‘more bearable, atleast fora while. The Now York nas Magezine s