Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World

Content Warning: This section contains discussions of fascist ideology and eugenics.

Capitalism is an economic system wherein a small number of people own the means of production and most of the land and resources, and everyone else is paid a wage for their labor so that they can purchase or rent small quantities of land and resources for their own survival. It is currently the prevailing economic system used around the world (See: Background). As Naomi Klein argues, surveillance capitalism is the enforcement of the capitalist project through various forms of government and corporate observation of the general population, including CCTV cameras, cell phones, Big Data, digital financial transactions, and more. Nationalism is the establishment of national identities and states, which are reinforced with borders, passports, and (in many cases) linguistic, religious, and/or ethnic identities.

Doppelganger explores how all of these forces feed into conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theorists like Wolf are often frightened by and angry about surveillance, and they may feel frustrated by the economic limitations of the capitalist system. Klein posits that conspiratorial thinking often draws upon the right emotions but gets the facts wrong: Instead of correctly identifying the sources of these negative emotions, conspiracy theorists retreat into nationalism and blame various groups of people that they perceive to be “other” for their problems.