Portside

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, 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. 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 conspiracy theories.

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 toured 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.