Naomi Klein on Trumpism and Our Age of ‘Unlikely Bedfellows’

What It Covers

Naomi Klein joins Ezra Klein to analyze how the MAGA coalition absorbed unlikely allies — from wellness influencers to tech oligarchs — using her 2023 book *Doppelganger* as a framework. The conversation spans mirror-world politics, Epstein-era elite impunity, AI populism, fascism's definition, and what a "welcoming left" could look like in response.

Key Questions Answered

• •Mirror World Blindness: Liberal and left institutions made a strategic error by blocking, muting, and dismissing far-right media ecosystems rather than monitoring them. Steve Bannon was actively building what he called "MAGA plus" in 2021–2022 — recruiting suburban Democratic women through figures like Naomi Wolf — while mainstream liberals assumed the movement had no reach. Ignoring a political coalition doesn't neutralize it; it just means you can't see it growing.
• •Diagonalism as Coalition Logic: Scholars Slobodian and Callison coined "diagonalism" to describe how politically unclassifiable groups — wellness influencers, anti-lockdown entrepreneurs, new-age spiritualists — form alliances with hard-right parties. This framework better explains Trumpism than the horseshoe theory. RFK Jr. exemplifies the pattern: anti-corporate rhetoric and nature-based spirituality made him a bridge between California wellness culture and MAGA, ultimately landing him as HHS Secretary.
• •Elite Impunity as Political Driver: The Epstein files reveal a pattern where extreme wealth produces a belief that rules don't apply. Klein argues this impunity — visible in Musk's dismissal of press accountability, Gates's Epstein ties, and Bannon's meme coin fraud — is the connective tissue of the current ruling coalition. Fascist movements historically emerge not from powerlessness but from powerful groups resisting accountability, including accountability from MeToo and labor organizing.
• •COVID as a Political Fork: The pandemic created a binary political choice that shaped the 2024 election: expand the state to protect people (eviction moratoriums, paid leave, free testing) or embrace a survival-of-the-fittest framework. Klein argues Silicon Valley's radicalization was driven less by COVID profits and more by the temporary loss of workplace power — quiet quitting, worker organizing, and demands for hazard pay — which they experienced as an existential threat requiring political intervention.
• •AI Populism as Untapped Left Opportunity: Data center fights in communities like Tucson are generating cross-partisan organizing around water scarcity, electricity consumption, and lack of public input — issues the right has framed as anti-transhumanism while the left has largely ignored. Klein argues the left should claim this terrain by connecting AI's resource extraction to cost-of-living concerns, worker displacement, and surveillance integration with agencies like ICE and Palantir.
• •Neighborism as Electoral Model: The Zohran Mamdani New York mayoral campaign — which mobilized over 100,000 volunteers — demonstrates a replicable political approach Klein calls "neighborism": jargon-free, economically populist organizing centered on visible working-class dignity. Mamdani's night-shift video series, which interviewed cab drivers at LaGuardia at 2 a.m., exemplifies how to valorize essential workers without policy abstraction, and reportedly drew roughly 10% of Trump voters in early polling.