Doppelganger: a Trip into the Mirror World

by Naomi Klein

It is notable also that the Covid protests took aim at symbols of collective action including, in both Italy and Australia, trade union headquarters, which were attacked and ransacked by diagonalist demonstrators. “FREEDOM,” they bellowed in the streets. That empty, heavy word. Freedom to do what? Protests usually are expressions of collective power, based on the core principle that we are stronger when united. But this was something different: a temporary conglomeration of atomized individuals who saw anything collective as the enemy, set against their individual bodies and their individual families. It was, in a way, a revolt against connectedness, a howl against the lessons the virus had taught us all so jarringly: that we share the same air with people we don’t know, the same hospitals, the same biome. That we are enmeshed with one another, like it or not. No, the demonstrators were saying, we are individual islands, shaped with our own hands alone; we answer to no one. We are “sovereign citizens” they declared, and you cannot force us to be in community or society.