On Wednesday 27th March 2024, from 7.30-9.30pm, Stroud Radical Reading Group will host a discussion of Doppelganger – a trip into the Mirror World by Naomi Klein. We will meet at Stroud Chocolate House, 2 Bedford Street – Stroud – GL5 1AY. Below you can find links to free excerpts, to buy a copy of the book at a discount, information about the venue and more.
Doppelganger is a guidebook for our unsettling age, inviting all of us to view our reflections in the looking glass. It’s for anyone who has lost hours down an internet rabbit hole, who wonders why our politics has become so fatally warped, and who wants a way out of our collective vertigo and back to fighting for what really matters. Braiding together elements of tragicomic memoir, chilling political reportage, and cobweb-clearing cultural analysis, Naomi Klein dives deep into what she calls the Mirror World—our destabilized present rife with doubles and confusion, where far right movements playact solidarity with the working class, AI-generated content blurs the line between genuine and spurious, New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers further scramble our familiar political allegiances, and so many of us project our own carefully curated digital doubles out into the social media sphere.
You can buy the book from the Yellow Lighted Bookshop (Nailsworth, Tetbury or Chalford pick up or delivery at £3.50) via the previous link – RRP £25. When looking at your “basket” enter the “couponcode” stroudradical24 for a 12% discount – final book price £22, a saving of £3).
This follows a discussion on 28th February 2024 of Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Health Threat – which covers similar issues and can also be bought from the Yellow Lighted Bookshop. You don’t have to have attended the previous event to join us to discuss the Naomi Klein book.
About our events and the venue
Stroud Radical Reading Group events are free to attend, though we will make a collection to cover costs. Anyone is welcome to listen to the discussion, though we encourage contributions only from those who have read at least some of the book we are discussing. We try to create a comfortable discussion space for everyone, including people who have not been part of a reading group or been to university.
We will meet at Stroud Chocolate House, 2 Bedford Street – Stroud – GL5 1AY. This is just off the Stroud High St. There is parking nearby in Fawkes Place, and step-free access. Drinks will be available – please bring some cash. Please get in touch if you’d like to get more of an idea of what the sessions are like or if you have any accessibility needs.
About the book
When Naomi Klein discovered that a woman who shared her first name, but had radically different, harmful views, was getting chronically mistaken for her, it seemed too ridiculous to take seriously. Then suddenly it wasn’t. She started to find herself grappling with a distorted sense of reality, becoming obsessed with reading the threats on social media, the endlessly scrolling insults from the followers of her doppelganger. Why had her shadowy other gone down such an extreme path? Why was identity – all we have to meet the world – so unstable? To find out, Klein decided to follow her double into a bizarre, uncanny mirror world: one of conspiracy theories, anti-vaxxers and demagogue hucksters, where soft-focus wellness influencers make common cause with fire-breathing far right propagandists (all in the name of protecting ‘the children’).
Resources:
- Naomi Klein on following her ‘doppelganger’ down the conspiracy rabbit hole – and why millions of people have entered an alternative political reality (an edited extract published by The Guardian)
- Video ‘trailer’ for the book (embedded below)
- Matthew Remski audio interview with Naomi Klein about Doppelganger on the Conspirituality podcast (60 minutes)
- 30 minute review of Doppelganger by Matthew Remski on the Conspirituality podcast
- 75 minute video interview with Naomi Klein by Strombo (embedded below)
- Naomi Klein’s website
- Naomi Klein on Facebook
- Naomi Klein on Instagram
- Naomi Klein on twitter
Stroud Radical Reading Group 