Doppelganger, page 42
“In Bailey, Roth found”: Laura Marsh, “Philip Roth’s Revenge Fantasy,” New Republic, March 22, 2021.
“Where’s Philip?”: Philip Roth, Operation Shylock: A Confession (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 22.
“‘I’m looking at myself’”: Roth, Operation Shylock, 71.
“Your name! Your name!”: Roth, Operation Shylock, 99.
“Philip, I feel that I’m reading”: Roth, Operation Shylock, 31.
“all of them in one”: Roth, Operation Shylock, 34.
“It’s too ridiculous to take seriously”: Roth, Operation Shylock, 55.
“preposterous proxy”: Roth, Operation Shylock, 115.
“the antitragic force”: Roth, Operation Shylock, 389.
“open race hate” … “genocidal talk”: Tucker Carlson, “Open Race Hate Forms Much of MSNBC’s Substance,” October 20, 2022.
“Some time in the last five years”: Sarah Ditum, “Naomi Wolf Is Not a Feminist Who Became a Conspiracy Theorist—She’s a Conspiracist Who Was Once Right,” New Statesman, October 7, 2014.
“There has been a distinct warming up”: Naomi Klein, “Screen New Deal,” The Intercept, May 8, 2020.
“CEO of a tech company”: “Watch Dr Naomi Wolf Discuss ‘Why Vaccine Passports Equal Slavery Forever,’” DailyClout channel on YouTube, March 30, 2021.
imagining that a global calamity: Arundhati Roy, “The Pandemic Is a Portal,” Financial Times, April 3, 2020.
“the ones who want us eating insects”: Ben Blanchet, “Newsmax TV Bans Reporter over Wacky Rant About Satan, Insects and Drinking Blood,” HuffPost, October 20, 2022.
“I AM THE YOU THAT IS NOT WORDS”: Roth, Operation Shylock, 87.
world’s ten richest men: Nabil Ahmed et al., “Inequality Kills: The Unparalleled Action Needed to Combat Unprecedented Inequality in the Wake of COVID-19,” Oxfam International, January 2022.
almost certainly fired by an Israeli soldier: Agence France-Presse, “Shireen Abu Aqleh Killed by ‘Seemingly Well-Aimed’ Israeli Bullet, UN Says,” The Guardian, June 24, 2022.
“In many ways, nothing has really changed”: Angela Davis, interview by Alonzo King (audio recording), City Arts & Lectures, May 24, 2022.
“Build back better. Blah, blah, blah”: “Greta Thunberg Mocks World Leaders in ‘Blah, Blah, Blah’ Speech,” BBC News channel on YouTube, September 28, 2021, at 0:06–0:52.
“They even succeeded in watering down”: “Greta Thunberg: ‘COP26 Even Watered Down the Blah, Blah, Blah,’” BBC News, November 15, 2021.
“At some point you’d have to live”: Tamara Lindeman, “Loss,” on the album Ignorance (Fat Possum Records, 2021).
9. The Far Right Meets the Far-Out
“World Wide Walkout”: Naomi Wolf, @DrNaomiRWolf, “#walkoutwednesday,” Gettr post, November 3, 2021.
“I feel like a vaccination”: “Newsmax Host Suggests Vaccines Are ‘Against Nature,’ and Some Diseases Are ‘Supposed to Wipe Out a Certain Amount of People,’” Media Matters for America, July 12, 2021 (video and transcript of Rob Schmitt Tonight, Newsmax, July 9, 2021).
“A wonderful plague”: “The Charter of New England: 1620,” The Avalon Project: Documents in Law, History, and Diplomacy, Yale Law School. Note: I have modernized the language for clarity of reading.
“But for the natives in these parts”: Howard Simpson, Invisible Armies: The Impact of Disease on American History (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1980), 7. Note: I have modernized the language for clarity of reading.
writing of “the Indians”: “A New Description of That Fertile and Pleasant Province of Carolina, by John Archdale, 1707,” in Original Narratives of Early American History: Narratives of Early Carolina 1650–1708, ed. Alexander Salley Jr. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1911), 282–311.
“conspirituality”: Charlotte Ward and David Voas, “The Emergence of Conspirituality,” Journal of Contemporary Religion 26, no. 1 (2011): 103–121.
“the Disinformation Dozen”: “The Disinformation Dozen: Why Platforms Must Act on Twelve Leading Online Anti-Vaxxers,” Center for Countering Digital Hate, March 24, 2021.
Christiane Northrup: Sam Kestenbaum, “Christiane Northrup, Once a New Age Health Guru, Now Spreads Covid Disinformation,” Washington Post, May 3, 2022 (updated May 9, 2022).
“You can go eat deep-fried pickles”: Jessica Wallace, “Kamloops Gym Owners Explain Why They Remain Open Despite Public Health Order Mandating They Close,” Kamloops This Week, December 23, 2021.
“Third Shift [added] to their leisure time”: Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women (1990; repr. New York: Perennial, 2002), 26–27.
“part of a larger withdrawal”: Barbara Ehrenreich, Natural Causes: An Epidemic of Wellness, the Certainty of Dying, and Killing Ourselves to Live Longer (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2018), 54–56.
“I may not be able to do much”: Ehrenreich, Natural Causes, 56–57.
“I was tired of flat, unforgiving dressing room lights”: Carmen Maria Machado, Her Body and Other Parties (Minneapolis: Graywolf Press, 2017), 153.
“I kneel down next to it”: Machado, Her Body and Other Parties, 165.
“Old age isn’t a battle”: Philip Roth, Everyman (London: Vintage, 2007), 156.
“Black women are three times more likely” … infant mortality rates: “Working Together to Reduce Black Maternal Mortality,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, April 3, 2023; Danielle M. Ely and Anne K. Driscoll, “Infant Mortality in the United States, 2019: Data from the Period Linked Birth/Infant Death File,” National Vital Statistics Reports 70, no. 14 (December 8, 2021): 1–17.
“Let me show you how simple”: “About: A Note from Steph,” Glowing Mama (website), accessed October 13, 2022.
“medicine’s sexism”: Michelle Cohen, “Goop Has Exploited the Medical Establishment’s Failures on Women’s Health,” CBC News, August 27, 2018.
“a leading cause of death”: Rupa Marya @DrRupaMarya, tweet, May 15, 2022, Twitter.
an estimated $155 billion: “Dietary Supplements Market Report till 2027,” MarketsandMarkets, April 2022.
“If you don’t support us”: Alex Jones, “The Alex Jones Show,” Infowars, May 11, 2022.
states like Wyoming and Mississippi: John Elflein, “Percentage of U.S. Population Who Had Been Given a COVID-19 Vaccination as of October 5, 2022, by State or Territory,” Statista, October 2022.
“Health is NOT THE GOAL of the medical establishment”: “Homepage,” Christiane Northrup M.D. (website), accessed January 3, 2023.
“Do you hate my body, Mom?”: Machado, Her Body and Other Parties, 164.
obesity, diabetes, and some forms of addiction: “People with Certain Medical Conditions,” Covid-19, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, updated February 10, 2023.
“Go fucking eat a carrot and jump on a treadmill”: @glowingmamafit, Instagram Reel, September 13, 2021.
“Thousands of white Americans”: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, “The Black Plague,” New Yorker, April 16, 2020.
changed as the pandemic wore on: Akilah Johnson and Dan Keating, “Whites Now More Likely to Die from Covid Than Blacks,” Washington Post, October 19, 2022.
“they turned out great!”: “Nashville Hat Shop Faces Backlash for Selling Anti-vaccine Nazi Jewish Star,” BBC News, May 30, 2021.
“The Slavs are to work for us”: Branko Marcetic, “You Know Who Else Opposed Vaccine Mandates? Hitler,” Jacobin, September 18, 2021.
“deaths pulled from the future”: Beatrice Adler-Bolton, “Deaths Pulled from the Future,” Blind Archive, Substack, January 3, 2022.
“you may roughly divide the nations”: “Living and Dying Nations: From Lord Salisbury’s Speech to the Primrose League, May 4,” New York Times, May 18, 1898.
Of the first 800,000 people … people living in poor U.S. counties: Julie Bosman, Amy Harmon, and Albert Sun, “As U.S. Nears 800,000 Virus Deaths, 1 of Every 100 Older Americans Has Perished,” New York Times, December 13, 2021; “A Poor People’s Pandemic Report: Mapping the Intersections of Poverty, Race and COVID-19,” Executive Summary, Poor People’s Campaign, April 2022.
“Leute, die sich selber sehen”: Andrew J. Webber, The Doppelgänger: Double Visions in German Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 3.
Vancouver is the third most expensive: Tom Huddleston Jr., “These Are the 5 Most Expensive Cities in the U.S. and Canada—and Los Angeles Isn’t One of Them,” CNBC News, July 6, 2022.
Many commentators speculated: Jen St. Denis, “The Billionaire and the Mayor,” The Tyee, October 24, 2022.
“They don’t work for some women’s bodies”: Harry Bradford, “Lululemon’s Founder Blames Yoga Pants Problem on Women’s Bodies,” HuffPost, November 6, 2013.
“Are Erections Important?”: Bob Kronbauer, “Here’s the Weird Essay Chip Wilson Just Wrote About Erections,” Vancouver Is Awesome, May 29, 2019.
fund right-wing politicians: Marc Fawcett-Atkinson, “Right-Wing Populist Group Fined for Ads Targeting Left-Leaning Politicians,” National Observer, October 7, 2022; Dan Fumano, “Lululemon Founder Gives $380,000 to Boost B.C.’s Right-Leaning Candidates, Asks Others to Donate,” Vancouver Sun, August 3, 2022.
“The election was about fear of crime”: Garth Mullins @garthmullins, tweet, October 16, 2022, Twitter.
10. Autism and the Anti-Vax Prequel
chlorine dioxide: See, for example, Kerri Rivera with Kimberly McDaniel and Daniel Bender, Healing the Symptoms Known as Autism, 2nd ed., e-book (Kerri Rivera, self-published, 2014), 81.
“proven to be false”: “Retraction—Ileal-Lymphoid-Nodular Hyperplasia, Non-Specific Colitis, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder in Children,” The Lancet 375, no. 9713 (February 6, 2010): 455.
faulty “interpretation”: Simon H. Murch et al., “Retraction of an Interpretation,” The Lancet 363, no. 9411 (March 6, 2004): 750. Of the twelve original coauthors who could be contacted, ten retracted the paper. The journal was unable to contact the thirteenth coauthor, John Linnell. The two who did not sign off on the retraction were Andrew Wakefield and Peter Harvey.
“callous disregard”: “Fitness to Practise Panel Hearing,” General Medical Council (UK), January 28, 2010.
a resurgence of diseases including measles: Manisha Patel et al., “Increase in Measles Cases: United States, January 1–April 26, 2019,” Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, May 3, 2019. “Elimination” defined as the “absence of sustained measles transmission that is continuous for ≥12 months in a defined geographic area.”
“reaching [the] highest number of reported cases in 23 years”: “Worldwide Measles Deaths Climb 50% from 2016 to 2019 Claiming over 207,500 Lives in 2019,” news release, World Health Organization, November 12, 2020.
“I respect all the research”: Naomi Wolf, “‘TRUTH’ with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Featuring Naomi Wolf—Season 2 Episode 21,” Children’s Health Defense (video), March 8, 2021, at 06:20.
“This Christmas, give”: “The Real Anthony Fauci and The Bodies of Others Boxed Set,” All Seasons Press, https://www.allseasonspress.com/store/p/the-real-anthony-fauci-and-the-bodies-of-others-boxed-set, accessed January 12, 2023.
“Asperger’s-like” … “a kind of Asperger’s quality”: Naomi Wolf, The Bodies of Others: The New Authoritarians, COVID-19 and the War Against the Human (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.: All Seasons Press, 2022), 97; Naomi Wolf, “Global Predators and the Assault on Human Freedom: The Naomi Wolf Interview,” The Monica Crowley Podcast, May 25, 2022, at 27:42–29:12, posted on Apple Podcasts.
“Don’t you tell me”: @glowingmamafit, Instagram reel, September 13, 2021.
masks and vaccines … anti-racist education … gender expressions: “‘This Is Rape’: Protesters Yell at Parents Walking with Masked Kids at School Event,” CNN News (video), October 8, 2021; Andrew Guttman, “Dad Who Decried Antiracism Initiatives at Brearley Urges Parents to Join Fight,” New York Post, May 8, 2021; “Digital Hate: Social Media’s Role in Amplifying Dangerous Lies About LGBTQ+ People,” Center for Countering Digital Hate and Human Rights Campaign, August 10, 2022.
“extinguish” behaviors: “Extinction in a basic principle of behavior, and its purpose is to extinguish or put an end to unwanted behaviors. Simply put, when a behavior is reinforced, it continues, so extinction removes the reinforcer and the behavior stops.” Lizzy Engelman, “A Crash Course on Extinction,” ABA Solutions (blog), July 15, 2019.
“his intense fear of indoor spaces”: Whitney Ellenby, “Bystanders Were Horrified. But My Son Has Autism, and I Was Desperate,” Washington Post, February 27, 2018.
“Many, many autistic children”: Aaden Friday, “When You’re Autistic, Abuse Is Considered Love,” The Establishment, March 21, 2018.
“precious moments”: Ellenby, “Bystanders Were Horrified.”
“indistinguishable from their normal friends”: Ole Ivar Lovaas, “Behavioral Treatment and Normal Educational and Intellectual Functioning in Young Autistic Children,” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 55, no. 1 (1987): 8.
billions spent on autism research: “Research Funding for Autism in the United States from 2008 to 2023,” Statista, September 8, 2022.
1 in every 44 … 1 in 150: “Community Report on Autism 2021,” Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; “Prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorders,” Autism and Developmental Disabilities Monitoring Network, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, March 30, 2012.
the clinical definition of autism expanded: Lorna Wing, The Autistic Spectrum, new updated ed. (London: Constable & Robinson, 2002), 23.
many more people deciding to get tested: Steve Silberman, Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity (New York: Penguin Random House, 2015), 41–43, 421.
better at recognizing autism in girls … Black, Indigenous, and Latino boys: Laura Hull, K. V. Petrides, and William Mandy, “The Female Autism Phenotype and Camouflaging: A Narrative Review,” Review Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders 7, no. 4 (2020): 306–317; Terra Vance, “What’s in a Word: Autism and White Privilege,” Neuroclastic: The Autism Spectrum According to Autistic People, June 2, 2019; David S. Mandell et al., “Race Differences in the Age at Diagnosis Among Medicaid-Eligible Children with Autism,” Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry 41, no. 12 (2002): 1447–1453.
children born to older parents: Kristen Lyall et al., “The Changing Epidemiology of Autism Spectrum Disorders,” Annual Review of Public Health 38, no. 1 (2017): 81–102.
“anti-vax capital” … 66.8 percent of one-year-olds … diphtheria: Ben Smee, “When Covid Came to the Anti-Vax Capital of Australia,” The Guardian, August 13, 2021; “Children Fully Immunised in NSW by Local Government Area 2020–21,” NSW Government Health, updated September 3, 2021; Jennifer King, “Now Diphtheria: Is Northern NSW Incubating Another Australian Health Crisis?,” The Guardian, July 8, 2022.
“I died in that moment”: Jenny McCarthy, Mother Warriors: A Nation of Parents Healing Autism Against All Odds (New York: Penguin, 2009), 7.
“If you ask 99.9 percent of parents”: Jenny McCarthy, “We’re Not an Anti-Vaccine Movement … We’re Pro-Safe Vaccine,” Frontline, PBS, March 23, 2015.
hawking her book: McCarthy, Mother Warriors.
“the world we live in”: Eric Garcia, “Tracing America’s Covid Vaccine Conspiracies to Autism Fearmongering,” MSNBC Opinion, December 8, 2021.
“the ideas” were “lying around”: Milton Friedman with Rose D. Friedman, Capitalism and Freedom, 40th anniversary ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), xiv.
The grift goes back: “Fitness to Practise Panel Hearing,” General Medical Council.
“Boom—the soul’s gone from his eyes”: “Jenny McCarthy and Holly Robinson Peete Discuss Their Battles with Autism on Oprah,” People, September 18, 2007.
two to four in ten thousand: Lorna Wing and David Potter, “The Epidemiology of Autistic Spectrum Disorders: Is the Prevalence Rising?,” Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews 8, no. 3 (2002): 151–161.
“unquestionably endowed”: Leo Kanner, “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact,” Nervous Child 2 (1943): 247.
“spectrum disorder”: Wing, The Autistic Spectrum.
“high-functioning” autism: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th ed. (Washington, D.C.: American Psychiatric Association, 1994), 954–955.
“the myth of changeling children”: Lorna Wing, “The History of Ideas on Autism: Legends, Myths and Reality,” Autism 1, no. 1 (1997): 13–14.
“In some versions”: Wing and Potter, “The Epidemiology of Autistic Spectrum Disorders,” 151.
entice the fairy parents: Kristen L. Bone, “Murders Most Foul: Changeling Myths,” in Women and the Abuse of Power: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Helen Gavin (Bingley, UK: Emerald, 2022), 31–42.
“[The changeling] must be beaten”: Carl Haffter, “The Changeling: History and Psychodynamics of Attitudes to Handicapped Children in European Folklore,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 4, no. 1 (1968): 57.
“There is ample evidence”: D. L. Ashliman, “Changelings: An Essay,” section 6, 1997.
“Stories with these fantasy endings”: Ashliman, “Changelings,” section 6.
“stories began to circulate”: Silberman, Neurotribes, 42.
11 percent of Vienna’s population at the time: Mario Holzner and Michael Huberman, “Red Vienna: A Social Housing Experiment, 1923–1933,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 53, no. 1 (2022): 49–88.
“The Viennese socialists”: Tamara Kamatovic, “How Vienna’s Socialist City Hall Put Children at the Heart of the Welfare State,” Jacobin, June 22, 2020.
“No longer subjugated”: Quoted in Kamatovic.
“No Viennese child”: Quoted in Kamatovic.
