Down the rabbit hole

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/10/2023 (731 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We all have that friend or person we know who changed. Either through COVID or other traumatic events, some people we know, or thought we knew, changed. They began to become individualistic, less altruistic, and they began to believe in bizarre conspiracy theories or outright lies.

Even some folks who we were adjacent to began to spout racist lies, support the honkers or even rebuke the science that was trying to keep us all alive.

So what happened?

This is the central question of the latest book by Canadian journalist and activist Naomi Klein, who explores the forces that have drawn so many down dark paths. In Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World, Klein departs from her hard-edge criticisms of capitalism (No Logo, This Changes Everything) in an attempt to make sense of the uptick in 4Chan-inspired hate and delusion, while exploring her own struggles through the pandemic and her career.

Klein asks, “How do we convince people being seduced by fantasy that it is still possible to exert power to change reality in big and important ways?”

Her inquiry began during COVID when she was isolated, provoked by the fact she indeed had a doppelganger — writer Naomi Wolf. Klein began to notice that “Other Naomi” and herself were routinely conflated on social media. The trouble, however, was (and is) that Klein was (and is) thinking and writing about the destructive power of capitalism, while Wolf, who in the 1980s and ‘90s produced relatively popular feminist texts, is now one of the most popular anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorists out there.

“Conspiracy theories, as we have seen, are both symptoms of confusion and powerlessness and tools of division and distraction that benefit elites,” Klein argues. And it appears Wolf has not only fallen victim to them, but now seeks to divide.

Both Naomis are Jews, and both writers about hegemony, hierarchy, and injustice — easily confused, perhaps. But during COVID, Wolf began to become a beacon and prophet of bizarre conspiracy theories that resonated with her disillusioned followers.

And then it happened — Wolf connected with none other than Steve Bannon, who exploited Wolf’s popularity and unreasoned theories.

Klein began to become obsessed with Wolf’s transformation, with Bannon’s podcast and a lack of meaning that came from this obsession and COVID isolation. Klein began to question her purpose and impact, despite her yoga, fitness instructor, West-Coast lifestyle, and the brand she built for herself.

Despite the cringey moments of the tales of her privileged trials during COVID, Klein’s investigation of her obsession with Wolf as her doppelganger and her fascination with Bannon surfaces a critical analysis of the impending demise of western society.

Klein posits that perhaps the millions who worship at the altar of fantasy are simply reacting to the collapse of capitalism. This is when people escape to the “Mirror World.” She suggests that “[i]t’s entirely possible that Bannon and Wolf’s war on reality is just what happens when so many of the lies that built the modern world visibly crumble. As the house collapses, some people choose to take flight into full-blown fantasy.”

Klein’s disillusionment with society and her own career and life, while tragic, speak to all of us who struggle with madness and injustice of the world, while losing connection with the things that matter. And this is where she offers hope — through what she calls “unselfing.”

Through this process, we move away from the Mirror World, become less obsessed with our brands, our Twitter avatars — who we think we need to be. Through unselfing we can imagine a better world. “Because it means that our role here on earth is not simply to maximize the advantage in our lives… It’s to maximize all life,” Klein argues. “We are not just here to make sure we as individuals survive, but to make sure that life survives; not to chase clout, but to chase life.”

This is the hope she discovers through her Wolf/Brannon fog. Now at 50 and a critical crisis in her own self-worth and purpose, Klein is able to get back to her roots. Her cris-de-cœur: naming the forces of destruction in our society and providing people with the thinking tools to take meaningful action.

Thinking, action and unselfing are the pathways to combatting confusion, powerlessness and the forces which seek to divide us. They may also be pathways to building a better society — one founded on, as Klein says, “collective organizations: it expands the sense of the possible by expanding the possible ‘we’.”

Matt Henderson is superintendent of Winnipeg School Division.