Naomi Klein on Trumpism and Our Age of ‘Unlikely Bedfellows’
3/20/20261 hr 20 min
Naomi Klein saw where our politics was headed before most people on the left. Her 2023 book “Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World” is hard to describe. But among other things, it traces the new coalitions Klein saw forming on the right, the ways they were co-opting issues long associated with the left, and finding huge audiences and influence outside existing institutions.
The people and coalitions that Klein wrote about run our world now. We are all living in the mirror world. As she put it, it’s “doppelgangers at the wheel.” So I wanted to have Klein on the show to help understand how that happened, what the left failed to see at the time and the lessons the left should take from it now.
As Klein told me: “The thing about doppelgangers is, in literature, they’re always a message telling you a warning: You have to look at yourself. There’s something about yourself that you’re not seeing.”
Note: We recorded this episode before the war in Iran.
Mentioned:
Doppelganger by Naomi Klein
No Logo by Naomi Klein
“Minnesota Proved MAGA Wrong” by Adam Serwer
End Times Fascism by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor
Book Recommendations:
Empire of AI by Karen Hao
Here Where We Live Is Our Country by Molly Crabapple
Fire Alarm by Michael Löwy
Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.
You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
We gave Times employees a preview of Crossplay from New York Times Games, and here's what they had to say.
Ezra Klein· Host0:05
I can finally play with other people.
Speaker 20:08
I'm pretty competitive. It's fun to beat friends and coworkers.
Speaker 00:12
I have a J for ten points.
Zohran Mamdani· Soundbite0:14
I'm guessing Tenga is not a word. Let's see. Tenga is a word. Oh.
Ezra Klein· Host0:19
As an English as a second language speaker, I like to learn new words.
Speaker 00:23
Crossplay, the first two-player word game from New York Times Games. Download it for free today.
Ezra Klein· Host0:29
[upbeat music] The author Naomi Klein is probably best known for scathing critiques of corporate power in books like No Logo, The Shock Doctrine, and This Changes Everything. But in twenty twenty-three, she published a pretty different kind of book. During the pandemic, Klein noticed how much she was being confused online with a different Naomi, Naomi Wolf, who in the nineties was known as a feminist author and journalist and Al Gore advisor, but who had, in the COVID era, become one of the most prominent right-wing