09/14/23 09/14/23 [captioning made possible by democracy now!] amy: from new york, this is democracy now! >> even though conspiracy theorists always talk about the elites, the elites they are after you, the people who conspiracy theories benefit most are the elites. because a deflect attention away from the system that has made them billionaires and it says we

just have to get those three guys. amy: today naomi klein for the hour on "doppelganger: a trip into the mirror world." she delves deeply into the culture of conspiracy theories and the growing alliance between the far right and people who once identified as part of the left, including naomi wolf, now embraced tucker carlson and steve bannon. naomi klein describes naomi wolf as her doppelgänger. >> what i have learned by shadowing my double, the forces that have destabilized my personal world are part of a much larger web of forces that are destabilizing are shared world. understanding these forces, maybe our best hope. amy: all that and more, coming up. welcome to democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report.

i'm amy goodman. in libya, the mayor of the eastern port city of derna says up to 20,000 people have been killed by sunday's catastrophic floods, which were triggered by the collapse of two dams amid unprecedented rainfall. libyan officials say the true toll may never be known after floodwaters washed whole neighborhoods into the sea. on tuesday, libya's prime minister dismissed the need for international aid, though he said libya does need help locating the bodies of victims who were swept into the mediterranean. >> we do not need aid not even medication or equipment nor doctors. thanks to god, we have 400 ambulances that took off that we have a problem in retrieving the bodies from the sea. amy: rescue workers warned of the potential spread of disease and appealed for more body bags.

many of derna's flood victims are being buried in mass graves. on wednesday, u.n. human rights chief volker türk called on libya's two rival governments to set aside their differences in order to coordinate relief efforts. >> i call on all libyan activists to overcome deadlocks and divisions and act collectively in ensuring access to relief. this is a time for unity of purpose. all those affected most receive support without regard for any affiliation. amy: the catastrophic flooding came as a new study found earth's ecosystems are outside of their safe operating space for humanity. the report in the journal science advances warns up and balances to a majority of key measurements of the planets health including bow diversity, freshwater, pollution, and the climate. climate scientist co-authored the report.

>> six of the nine boundaries are outside of the safe space. the four that we assessed in 2015 are deeply into the red so we continued to move in the wrong direction. this is a big concern. amy: close to 800 organizations have endorsed climate actions beginning friday, culminating in a march to end fossil fuel sunday here in new york at the united nations. in morocco, search-and-recovery teams say they're frustrated that the government rejected offers of foreign aid as the death toll from last week's devastating earthquake nears 3000. this week french president emmanuel macron sent a message to the moroccan people that king mohammed vi had rejected an offer by france to provide direct humanitarian aid. so far morocco has only provided access to aid workers from spain, the united arab emirates, the u.k., and qatar. many survivors in remote villages have been sleeping outdoors since the earthquake

struck. >> we don't know where we are going to go, what we're going to do, where we are going to live. winter is coming. the rain. winter conditions, rain. we have young children. we have nothing. amy: the united nations' special envoy to sudan says he is stepping down from the role three months after sudan's military junta declared him persona non grata, something that's not allowed under the u.n. charter. volker perthes testified to the u.n. security council on monday. >> these 5000 people have been killed since the start of the conflict and over 12,000, injured. these are conservative figures. the actual number is likely much higher. what started as a conflict between two military formations could be morphing into full-scale civil war. amy: some 20 million people in sudan, nearly half the population, face acute food

insecurity. 6 million are just one step away from famine. on monday, leaders of over 50 international human rights and humanitarian groups accused global leaders of failing to take action in the face of atrocities in sudan. ukraine's intelligence service says ukrainian forces successfully launched their largest attack yet on the russian navy's black sea fleet. on wednesday morning, ukrainian bombers equipped with british- and french-made cruise missiles struck a dry dock in the crimean city of sevastopol, destroying a russian amphibious ship and a submarine. elsewhere, russia's military said its air defense units thwarted a drone attack over crimea, while ukraine claimed to have shot down 17 out of 22 russian drones launched at targets in southern ukraine. here in the united states, a senate investigations subcommittee has issued a subpoena for documents on saudi arabia's $700 billion sovereign

wealth fund and its investments in the u.s. senator richard blumenthal is probing a proposed merger between the saudi fund and the pga liv golf tour. during a hearing wednesday, blumenthal and other lawmakers raised saudi human rights abuses and links between saudi leaders and the 9/11 attacks. >> this week marks 22 years since those horrific attacks. not only did 15 of the 19 hijackers come from saudi arabia, but in the years since, evidence have come to light compelling and mounting evidence revealing the saudi government may have known or knowingly aided some of these hijackers. amy: over the weekend, president biden shook hands with saudi crown prince mohammed bin salman at the g20 summit, two days before the u.s. commemorated the

9/11 attacks. while campaigning for president biden vowed to make mbs a pariah over the assassination of "washington post" columnist jamal khashoggi and humans rights issues. hurricane and tropical storm watches have been issued for much of coastal new england and eastern canada ahead of the arrival of hurricane lee this weekend. the storm, now a category 2 hurricane, is expected to widen as it crashes into eastern maine, new brunswick, and nova scotia on saturday, bringing damaging winds and a storm surge that will coincide with spring tides. members of the united auto workers are gearing up for the first-ever simultaneous strikes against the detroit three car manufacturers. uaw president shawn fain issued a warning to automakers wednesday ahead of tonight's midnight contract expiration. >> the big three can afford to immediately give us our fair share. if they choose not to, then they

are choosing to strike themselves and we are not afraid to take action. amy: the strike action would see workers suddenly walk out of targeted plants, while others continue to work in a bid to "create confusion." fain also said the strikes could escalate to an across-the-board work stoppage by all 150,000 uaw members if talks do not progress. auto workers are seeking a 40% pay increase, a 32-hour workweek, a return to regular pensions, an end to compensation tiers, and cost-of-living adjustments, among other demands. so far ford, gm, and stellantis have offered pay raises between 17.5% and 20%. senator bernie sanders has called on the u.s. public to support the uaw to help "create an economy that works for all, not just the privileged few." sanders notes the ceo's of the big three have seen their pay increase by more than 40% over the past four years, earning between $20 million and $30 million each last year alone.

the three companies made $23 billion in profits in the first half of this year, an 80% increase over last year. in texas, a federal judge again declared the deferred action for childhood arrivals, or daca program, unlawful, blocking an attempt by the biden administration to codify daca into a federal regulation. it's the second such ruling by conservative judge andrew hanen, a george w. bush appointee. daca will remain in place for some 580,000 recipients and continue to issue renewals but will not process first-time applications. the decision prompted calls for the biden administration to prioritize immigration reform and provide a pathway to citizenship for immigrants living in the united states. the new york legal assistance group called the ruling "inhumane and shameful" and said, "it is unconscionable that our judicial system is placing thousands of people back into the shadows of this dysfunctional, harmful immigration system."

the case is expected to end up at the supreme court. the international organization for migration has found the u.s.-mexico border to be the world's deadliest land migration route. >> the international organization for migration has documented the deaths and disappearances of 686 migrants on the u.s.-mexico border in 2022, making it the deadliest land route for migrants worldwide last year. the figure represents nearly half of the 1457 migrant deaths and disappearances reported throughout the americas last year, the deadliest on record since the missing migrants project began in 2014. amy: the u.n. agency said the true toll is likely to be much higher. half of the recorded deaths near the border are linked to the

sonoran and chihuahuan deserts. the iom called on governments to urgently create regular legal migration pathways to prevent further unnecessary tragedy. in wisconsin, republican leaders are moving had with plans to impeach newly elected liberal state supreme court justice jen presale which, whose landslide election victory in april gave progressives control of the court for the first time in 15 years. with her election, the court is now expected to restore abortion rights in wisconsin and could overturn legislative and congressional district map gerrymandered by republicans. on monday, republican sibley speaker robin voss announced the creation of a panel to investigate whether to impeach her after she called the current maps unfair and rigged during her campaign. in a statement, the aclu said

"the attacks on democracy happening in wisconsin should raise alarm bells for americans everywhere. across the country, we are seeing increasingly authoritarian tactics used to delegitimize the electoral process from baselessly ousting elected officials to election to nihilism to passing restrictions that make it harder to vote." utah republican senator met romney -- mitt romney said wednesday he will not seek reelection in 2024, saying it's time for a new generation of leaders. he is one of the few members of the republican party to speak out against donald trump and was the only republican to vote to convict trump in both of his impeachment trials. he spoke to reporters after announcing his decision not to run for a second term. >> there's no question republican party today is in the shadow of donald trump.

he is the leader of the greatest portion of the republican party. it is a populist, i believe demagogue portion of the party. amy: and those are some of the headlines. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. coming up, naomi klein on "doppelganger: a trip into the mirror world." stay with us. ♪♪ [music break]

amy: "double vision" by foreigner. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman. nermeen: and i'm nermeen shaikh. welcome to all of our listeners and viewers from around the country and around the world. today we make a trip into the mirror world. the acclaimed writer naomi klein has a new book out this week that delves deeply into the culture of conspiracy theories and a growing alliance between the far right and people who

once identified as part of the -- as progressives. the book comes as robert f. kennedy, jr. campaigns against joe biden for the democratic nomination for president. kennedy, who was once a prominent environmental lawyer, is now a leading figure in the anti-vaccine movement. in july, kennedy made headlines after claiming "covid-19 is targeted to attack caucasians and black people." he went on say ashkenazi jews and chinese are most immune to covid. one notable defender of kennedy's claims was the writer naomi wolf, who is best known for her 1991 book "the beauty myth." in a substack post, wolf defended kennedy writing, "rfk jr is cursed and blessed with a passion for actual truth." kennedy and wolf have both been embraced by the far right. republican megadonors are helping to bankroll kennedy's longshot presidential campaign, while wolf is now a regular guest on steve bannon's podcast

"the war room," where she spreads conspiracy theories about covid vaccines and other issues. former fox news host tucker carlson has also praised naomi wolf, saying she is "one of the bravest, clearest-thinking people i know." amy: well, naomi wolf plays a central role in naomi klein's new book titled "doppelganger: a trip into the mirror world." client examines how and -- klein examines why more and more people started confusing her with wolf as naomi wolf fell deeper into what naomi klein called the mirror world where facts no longer matter. naomi klein writes in the book -- "the trouble with the mirror world: there is always some truth mixed in with the lies; always some devastating collective failure it has identified and is opportunistically exploiting." in a moment, naomi klein will

join us live. [no audio] >> i used to be horrified by this but then something happened that i did not expect. i got interested. interested in what it means to have a doppelgänger. so i decided to follow my doppelgänger took place i had come to think of as the mirror world. it is a strange mirror image of the world where i live. it is a place where many ideas that i care about are being twisted and worked into dangerous doppelgänger versions of themselves.

when i look at the mirror world, i don't see this agreement over should reality, but what is real and what is simulation. with ai generating more and more of what we see and hear, it is only getting ardor to distinguish the authentic from the synthetic. after all, artificial intelligence is a mirroring machine. we see in the cumulative words, ideas, and images that our species has managed to create, something that feels lifelike but it is not life. it is a forgery of life stuff i shadowed my double further into the mirror world, a place where soft focus wellness influencers make common cause with firebreathing far right propagandists all in the name of saving and protecting the

children. not everyone is dogged by the doppelgänger, but our culture is crowded with all kinds of doubles. all of us who maintain a persona or avatar online are kind of creating our own doppelgängers. forging a separate public identity that is both us and not us, doppelgänger. we perform for one another as the price of admission in a rapacious economy. all the while, tech companies create digital profiles of as without our full knowledge. data doubles that follow us everywhere we go online, carrying their own agenda, logic , and their own threats. what is all of this doubling and double gaining doing to us? how is it steering what we pay attention to and what we neglect and ignore? doppelgängers are often

understood as a warning or an omen, a message that something needs our attention. reality is doubling, multiplying, glitching, telling us to pay attention. because it is not just individuals that can slip into a sinister version of themselves. the earth can transform into an uncanny twin of what we once knew. whole societies can flip. that is the reason many doppelgänger works of art are ultimately about the potential professors him -- fascism in our society, even within ourselves. what i have learned by shadowing my double is that the forces that have destabilized my personal world are part of a much larger web of forces that are destabilizing our shared world. an understanding these forces may be our best hope. amy: that video featured naomi

klein, author of the new book "doppelganger: a trip into the mirror world." naomi klein is an award-winning author and journalist. she is professor of climate justice at the university of british columbia and the founding co-director of the ubc centre for climate justice. her previous books include "on fire: the case for a green new deal," "the shock doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism,""this changes everything: capitalism vs.the climate" and "no logo." naomi is also a columnist for "the guardian." she is joining us now from washington, d.c., she begins her book tour around the country. welcome to democracy now! congratulations on the publication of this book. i like what the great artist and other malik crabapple said about your book, a dazzling

hallucinatory tour de force that takes the reader through shadow selves and global fascism, leaving them gasping by the end. naomi, if you can explain more this journey you took through the pandemic into this mirror world, who were doppelgänger is, and then go back to 2011 and that moment in the loo where you talk about hearing women talk about you or was it naomi wolf? >> first of all, amy and nermeen, thank you for having me back on the show. it is such a pleasure to be with you. and thank you for airing that video. i want to credit the director colby richardson, who is an amazing video artist. those of you who are listening just to the audio, i encourage you to watch the video version

because it gets really trippy. amy, you listed some of my previous books in that lovely introduction. my books back to "no logo," which i wrote on the cusp of the new millennium almost a quarter century ago, have been a test to map our political moment. they have been attempts to make sense of moments of big shifts in our political world, cultural world, and in the case of "this changes everything," our physical world. i would say "doppelgänger" is an attempt to make a usable map of our moment. the thing is, our moment is a lot weirder and wilder than any i have ever live through. they're all kinds of strange happenings at work, all kinds of uncanny events. i thought in many ways that i needed to write in a different way, a way that sort of mirrored

the wildness of now. i let myself have more fun with the writing. i wanted to refind a voice that felt more like me, like person who talks to their friends. i was more conversational. also, this project began during the pandemic. i have written about large-scale collective shocks, that is what "the shock doctrine" is about. to realize in the past of was covering hurricane katrina or the u.s. and u.k. invasion and occupation of iraw, or the asian tsunami, these huge cataclysmic events, i was as you are, the journalist who comes in with a notepad, maybe a camera, and i am interviewing other people about their shock. really, i have had a distance.

covid was different. nobody was outside of that shock. it upended my world as it did all of our worlds. in many ways, the world became uncanny and unfamiliar. freud described uncanny as that species are frightening in which -- that which was familiar becomes strange. think about times square during the pandemic. that is an uncanny apparition. it is something familiar that looks completely different. it is empty. one of the busiest places on earth. but i think there are many kinds of uncanny experiences that we have in the world today. i now live in british columbia. we had an extreme weather event a couple of years ago called a heat dome. hundreds of people died. millions of marine creatures died. but what was most uncanny about the heat dome, it was not our weather. it was like somebody else's

weather coming to a temperate rain forest. i thought by using the uncanny nest of having a doppelgänger -- you asked about my doppelgänger. i am confused with another writer named naomi wolf. having that identity confusion is an extreme form of uncanniness because what becomes unfamiliar is you. you hear people talking about you but it is not you. i thought, this is an interesting technique. should i tell the bathroom story? amy: please. >> the first chapter begins telling the story where i was in new york city to be part of occupy wall street. i was at a march through the

financial district at the height of occupy wall street. like other people at that march, i needed to use a public restroom. i was in one of these skyscrapers. i don't exact a remember which building. but while in the restroom, i overheard a couple of people talking about me -- being quite unkind, i must say. they were sort of like, did you read that article by dale mcclain? she does not really understand our movement or demands. i was sort of frozen in fear. it brought back all of my terrible high school memories, these mean girls who were talking about me. but i realized, oh, they're not talking about me, they're talking about him but he yells. i came out of the stall and said, words i've had to say too many times, "i think you're talking about naomi wolf." in the end, they became quite

fitting because when you overhear people talking about us on social media, we essentially are reading the graffiti on the bathroom walls which is not healthy and we should probably stop doing that. the first time i became aware of the dignity if in the real world , it was literally in the bathroom. amy: this weekend is the 12th anniversary of occupy wall street. >> yes, it is been going on for some time. nermeen: i would like to join amy and congratulating you on this book. i know i'm not alone in thinking this, when i read it, i realized it is actually the book that needed to be written. it is amazing the way you are simultaneously funny, subtle, and so insightful about our present historical moment. i want to ask about the reason -- the doppelgänger effect you

identify is not just with naomi wolf. naomi wolf is on was like incidental to what you come to identify, which is you recognize and see your doppelgänger, that you are also saying " magnification of many undesirable aspects of our shared culture." could you enumerate or list what those undesirable aspects are of which -- you can select some because there are so many. >> it deafly would not have been worth doing this if it was not a narrow aperture. that would allow us to see much larger forces at work. i think we all know people who have changed dramatically in the past for years. who don't really seem like themselves. i think it is less interesting that naomi wolf is a seemingly

doppelgänger for me and a lot of people's eyes and she seems to be a doppelgänger of her former self. she was a prominent feminist. she was involved in progressive movement and now here she is on steve bannon's podcast. in some cases, every single day. there have been weeks where she has been a guest every single day he has been broadcasting. i think probably democracy now! listers would be surprised they published a book together, put out t-shirts together. her role in steve bannon's media sphere is a must like a cohost more than a guest. she is really important figure in this world. part of the reason we don't know this has to do with what i call the mirror world and the fact while acs, we have chosen for the most part not to see them. i think that is very dangerous because these are really important political movements. steve bannon is a very able political strategist.

he got donald trump elected once and he fully intends to do it again. part of steve bannon's strategy is that he is very good at looking at issues and people who have been abandoned by the democratic party or even by the left, people who have been mistreated, ejected, and saying, "come on over to this side of the class and we will take a little bit of truth" as you use that trick that there is a little bit of truth makes in and we will mix it in with these dangerous lies. what concerns me about that is maybe of the issues they are co-opting and twisting our issues that the left should be more vocal about. i had 1 -- in the research i was listing to hundreds of hours of his podcast, i felt most destabilized when i would hear bannon cut together a montage,

audio montage and video montage of intros and how chose a major cable news show on cnn and msnbc , brought to you by pfizer, brought to you by moderna. his point was come you can't trust these corporate media outlets because they are bought and paid for by the drug companies that are trying to get you vaccinated. for me what was chilling was that was a doppelgänger of the kind of media education that i grew up in. we all had these charts where -- pay me, they sounded a little like you. they sounded like noam chomsky except through a worked mirror. it reminded me i don't think we're doing that kind of system-based media education anymore where we really are looking at these ownership structures. if that does not happen, it is going to be co-opted in the mirror world. nermeen, thank you for the kind words about the book. it was a risk but i think maybe

by being specific, we're all thinking about the people in our lives and this phenomenon that has affected us all. when i look at people that made a similar political migration from liberalism or leftism to the bannoneque right, i think we see some economic forces at work. naomi wolf has quadrupled her following because of this political decision. she is not the only one. i'm sure people are thinking of other people. it is a smart business move. this is happening within an economic system that has monetized to tension. -- detention. people are trying to build a personal brand because this is the only way they can survive. and there are a lot of clicks

over there. i think that a some of it. what are the other forces that get magnified? well, this is a little tricky to say because i do -- i don't think this gives people a pass but wolf is one of these people who has experienced a lot of shaming and pylons on left twitter, x or whatever it is called. for good reason she has spread conspiracies and made major factual errors in her book, but i don't think that is necessarily justification for cruelty. that is something else like it's magnified. when people have an experience that is very, very negative where they get treated almost like they are not human -- and that is partly because they're performing themselves as a brand which is saying, hey, i am out

here, commodity, i'm a thing of people start thinking come if you are anything i can throw things that you and you will bleed. i think that is part of what is magnified here and that becomes a justification for i think an unjustifiable political alliance with extremely dangerous figures who are building a network of far right political parties who take issues like rifle suspicion of big pharma, rifle anger at big tech, rifle anger at the big elite and switch it to racism, xenophobia and i'm thinking about figures like giorgia meloni. nermeen: if you could elaborate on that point, one of the failures you identify is for instance the democratic party or progressives generally, not focusing on making, for instance, different social media platform more equitable, more

democratic but rather when people are deplatformed, celebrating their removal. you say that effectively disappeared is the equivalent is saying children who think that once they close their eyes, the world has disappeared. if you could elaborate on that? >> when i would confess to people i knew that i was working on this book, sometimes i would get this strange reaction like, why would you give her attention? there was this sense because she was no longer visible in the pages of "the new york times" or on msnbc or wherever and because she had been deplatformed on the social media we are on, that she just did not exist. there was this assumption that we, whoever we are, are in

control of the attention. so if this big it gets turned off and there's no more attention but because i was following this, i was think she had a much larger platform than probably she had had since her star rose in the 1990's and she was advising al gore on his presidential run in 2000. what tucker carlson is more than what a lot of liberal media outlets can offer. she has been on jordan peterson's podcast. she is also -- i call it the mirror world because it is a one-to-one replica of many of the social media platforms, the crowdfunding platforms. she was kicked off twitter and innately got an account on -- immediately got into count on getter. i think it is really reckless to ignore this world because it is not like it is a hobby what

they're doing. as steve bannon says, the goal is to take power for the next 100 years. so not paying attention to this and not looking at what issues are getting traction there i think is reckless. in 2016, steve bannon successfully peeled away a portion of the democratic party base who had voted for democrat after democrat, who promised them they were going to renegotiate or cancel free trade deals that had gutted their communities and offshore jobs. and they did not do it. many signed more free trade deals. steve bannon saw an opportunity. i don't think it is about whether or not he personally believes this is an important issue or whether trump did anything really meaningful in this regard, the issue is they picked up an issue their opponent had abandoned and used it for political effect. that is now happening with opposition to big tech, to big pharma, even standing up for free speech. i think there needs to be -- it

is wildly critical because they are the same people who are banning books. to me, we can't control them. we cannot control ourselves and whether or not we are doing a good enough job embodying our own principles, and i think one of the things that happened or the pandemic is the more misinformation was being spread by the likes of wolf and bannon, the more people who see themselves as progressive started just getting into a reactive position where we are just defending the cdc. we're just defending with the government is saying. but in fact, the role of the left is to push for much more. sure, get vaccinated, wear our mask. but what about fighting for the right of indoor air quality for everybody? what about demanding schools have smaller classrooms, more outdoor education, more teachers, giving essential workers the races instead of just the applause? were listing -- lifting the

patents on the vaccines. i know you have covered it consistently on democracy now!, but it was -- i live in canada now. get the trucker shut down. i won't get into much about the trucker convoy except as say one of the things that occurred to me, what would've happened if there was a robust left that had shut down the cities and demanded before we got our fourth booster everybody on this planet got there first covid vaccine? or made any of these other collective demands about truly funding public health care. i think we have to be a lot more ambitious and a lot less reactive for so "they." nermeen: if you could explain, you mentioned the truck convoy. what do you think why it was so

important? what was misrepresented? >> that is little tricky to explain quickly but seven months before the famous trucker convoy , the one that made it on all the u.s. talk shows -- and that was mainly in a tie backs event -- there was a convoy that was in british columbia that was in response to the unmarked graves whose presence were confirmed first at the side of the former indian residential school and more unmarked graves confirmed at other grounds of other former so-called residential schools. i say "confirmed," because communities always knew there were burial grounds on the side of these genocidal schools, but their presence was confirmed using ground in a trading radar.

there was such an outpouring of solidarity in the aftermath of that, that there was a convoy organized by truckers in british columbia, hundreds of trucks that drove in front of the closed former residential school called the "we stand in solidarity convoy." it came from a place, as i say and they said, solidarity of wanting to say this atrocity, this genocide is not only an issue for first nations to fight for justice, it be everybody's business. it was striking there was this kind of doppelgänger trucker convoy seven months later. what i say in the book, some truckers went to both. what is interesting to me is the way doppelgängers stand in for the fact human beings are complicated. i think my own doppelgänger is

complicated. i think she has done good things in her life and some really damaging things stuff that is true for most people. what interests me as a political theorist is one of the systems that incurs the best part of ourselves, support that impulse toward solidarity and compassion as opposed to light up the most individualistic part of ourselves. amy:, klein, who new book is out just this week called "doppelganger: a trip into the mirror world." we are back with her in a minute. ♪♪ [music break]

amy: "lost in the citadel" by lil nas x. this is democracy now!, democracynow.org, the war and peace report. i'm amy goodman with nermeen shaikh. we are spending the hour with naomi klein. her new book is just out called "doppelganger: a trip into the mirror world." naomi, i wanted to talk to you

about robert f kennedy, junior. in july, the presidential candidate spoke at press event in new york city and claimed the covid-19 vaccine is a genetically engineered bioweapon that may have been ethnically targeted to spare people who are jewish and chinese. >> covid-19, there is an argument that it is ethnically targeted. covid-19 attacks certain races disproportionately. covid-19 is targeted to attack caucasians and black people. the people who are most immune are jews and chinese. amy: that is robert kennedy. naomi, you wrote an article before these comments in the guardian headlined "beware we ignore robert f kennedy, jr. 's candidacy at our peril."

you write extensively in this piece about his background. it was not just covid-19 vaccines he was concerned about. he goes way back in his antivax attitudes and activism. talk about the significance of this and what you continually say throughout the book in that we ignore these views at our own peril. >> so i think in a way he is the doppelgänger of his father and uncle and sort of -- i see it is a court of counterfeit politics. sorry for rfk jr. supporters listing. i think what he is doing is tapping into a lot of real fears, angers. there are times when i listen to him when i can't help nodding

along when he is talking about regulatory capture of government agencies by the corporations there's must to be regulating. that is something i have been covering for a long time. or the industrial complex. the reason i call it for politics, if you look at what he is running on, this is not bernie. he is not actually running on a platform of significant regulations that would address the crises that he is talking about. it is kind of a libertarian platform. he isn't even running on universal public health care. if you are worried about big pharma and profiteering, how about running on pharmacare, that we should not be leaving life-saving drugs to the market? but you will never hear him say something like that. i think for leftists who are frustrated with the centrism of the democrats, it can seem like

this is really an alternative. i would really, really caution against it and look at what he is actually running on. is he running on raising the minimum wage? no, he has not. he is tapping into these real critiques, real issues like an inflated military budget, but then his position on israel, for instance, as more militarism. same thing with steve bannon, by the way. he talks a great game about the military-industrial complex. he is obsessed with china and positioning the u.s. for third world war with china. if you are serious critic, would not be as focused as steve bannon is on china bashing. rfk, obviously with that clip you played, is extraordinarily disturbing, dangerous. a lot of conspiracy ends up in

this anti-semitic territory. the oldest there in the world -- i made the argument in the book, part of what we are dealing with with the rise of conspiracy culture, and i call it culture not theories because the theor ies so wildly contradict each other. it is a posture mistrust. one minute covid is a bioweapon perhaps and the next minute it is just a cold so don't even wear a mask. you really would need to choose if you had a theory between whether or not it was a bioweapon or whether or not it was a cold. if it were a bioweapon, presumably, you would want to do anything you can not be infected. they never attempt to resolve these glaring contradictions because the point of it is to throw up a kind of distraction so that we are not focused on what i would describe as the conspiracies in plain view. the fact that pharmaceutical companies turned covid into this profit center, the fact --

despite the fact the vaccine development was funded with public dollars, all of the initial orders wherefrom the government. there are these outrageous patents on these vaccines and they never should have been patented in the first place. i think we need to be wary of being overly credulous. we know there are real conspiracies in the world. you've been the 50th anniversary of the overthrow of salvador allende. new documents, every week that show us the behind-the-scenes meeting. if we look at that conspiracy, it is a good example -- what you see in the documents about the u.s. destabilization campaign of salvador allende. it wasn't that there were some nefarious bull about depopulated in the earth or whatever the conspiracy culture is climbing, it was to protect u.s. telecom interest.

it was capitalism doing its thing and sometimes it takes a plot to do it, is the way i put it in the book. coming back to what i said earlier about an absence of basic political education, if people do understand how capitalism works, if we don't understand this is a system that is really built to consolidate wealth and it will always have a massive underclass, and instead people have been told capitalism is just big macs and freedom and rainbows and everybody getting what they deserve, then when that system fails them, they're going to be very vulnerable to 70 going "oh, it is all a plot by the jews or whatever the conspiracy of the day is. it is really our armor against this conspiracy culture. nermeen: you say in the book does some point "conspiracy

culture" is because one can't call it a theory because it is a conspiracy with no theory. rfk and your own? banger -- in your own doppelgänger are emblematic, especially jenna pandemic, the number of conspiracies that proliferated and of course spread so exponentially, so quickly but because everybody on the planet practically who was able to do it was online -- if you could speak specifically. conspiracies have all his existed, but talk about the power now just because of their sheer reach combined with, as you say, this lack of education on a structure within which to understand what is being said. >> absolutely. you're absolutely right, nermeen, especially times that are chaotic, during times of

disaster, there often these wild conspiracy theories that emerge because they claim to make sense of an event that seems senseless , especially when there's a huge amount of loss. our minds reach for those easy explanation. i sighed after hurricane katrina, after the tsunami, sought in iraq, again and again as a reporter. this is different. what is different is when all of this is playing out on platforms, private platforms owned by billionaires that have created incentive structures that mean whoever puts out the most clickable content can monetize them, create such an incentive structure to be that person first out of the gate making the wildest climb you possibly can. i would put conspiracy culture within the framework of the disaster capitalism complex that

we have talked about before. we have seen in the aftermath of disasters that these players move in an attempt to profit from disasters. conspiracy influencers are part of the disaster capitalism complex, but it gets confusing because often what they're talking about is other people profiting off of disaster. it is a mirror world. it is trippy. you have to get a little bit trippy. nermeen: i want to ask you what the main conclusion of the book are but i would also like to read one of the things you say, ultimately it is as if you express gratitude toward naomi wolf because of the reflection, the interest in her and what it reveals not just about our present moment but also yourself within this social media world. at the end you quote john burger

who you say taught you a long time ago that calm itself is a form of resistance. first of all, what is the main take away from the book? and that point itself, calm is a form of resistance. how is one to attain that calm? >> it is a first draft of a map of the post-covid world. through one person's eyes. mapping is collective work. it is been great to be out here talking to people, reading articles that people have written, adding to it and adding layers. we are making sense of the way we have changed, the way our world has changed. i think the big take away from the book is all of this is about not seeing. whether we are creating doppelgängers ourselves on monday and performing perfected versions, that is a way of

distracting ourselves from the weight of our political moment. listing to your headlines, it is an atlas of human suffering. it is so hard to look at the rally that we are in right now with the overlay of endless wars and climate disasters and massive inequality. so whether we are making fantastical conspiracy theories are getting lost in her own reflection, it is all about not looking at that reality that is only bearable if we get outside of our own heads and collectively organize. rebuild our social movements so they can offer people material improvements to their lives. that is the only way we fight these surging conspiracies. it is not going to be fact checkers or content moderators. it is going to be a robust left. amy: let's end where we started

with that term "doppelgänger" and what more you want to say about it and if naomi wolf has responded. >> it is interesting. she posted something this morning or maybe yesterday casting this as some sort of -- like my work as some sort of part of a plot to attack her. which isn't surprising. she is using it -- ok, i think this must be very hard for her is what i would say. i have really tried to reiterate she has a case study and an interesting study, but this is done about her. i think she is been treated quite cruelly. i'm not interested in adding to that. i think we need to hold one another accountable, but that does not mean we have a right to be cruel.

i hope if she were to actually read the book, she would see that it is and perhaps the way it has been portrayed as a book attack on her. amy: we have to leave it there. naomi klein, author of "doppelganger: a trip into the mirr

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