A Humbling, A Softening

On doppelgangers, being woke, that time I was radicalized by Twitter, and returning to myself

“Doppelgangers, however, are not only forms of torment. For centuries, doubles have been understood as warnings or harbingers. When reality starts doubling, refracting off itself, it often means that something important is being ignored or denied—a part of ourselves and our world we do not want to see—and that further danger awaits if the warning is not heeded.” —Naomi Klein, Doppelganger

It’s hard to pinpoint what part of the “Freedom” Convoy—which occupied downtown Ottawa in February 2022 and spawned satellite protests across the country including weekly demonstrations in my neighbourhood for months—might have constituted “the worst.” Possibly the gas-lighting as participants insisted the vibe was peace and joy, as they were intending to overthrow the government and disturbed residents all night long. Maybe the blatant intimidation and violent overtones, the military camo gear, the trucks, the noise. When the Canadian flag started feeling like a threat. The bizarro atmosphere, people screaming about 15 minute cities, and 5G mind control, and an old man weaving through crowds along Bloor Street on a giant tricycle flying a banner that said, “TRUMP WON.”

All of it was strange, sinister, and destabilizing, but the most destabilizing aspect, for me, was the vague sense of recognition I felt whenever I encountered these parades. Though it was not like staring into a mirror exactly—I’m not a flag-waver. I’ve got all my Covid boosters. I don’t own a car, let alone a pickup truck. I subscribe to three newspapers, check my facts and sources, and have no desire to overthrow anything because I’ve read enough books to know how revolutions turn out, especially for women.

But still, there was something in their zealotry, that fervour, their sense of righteousness. And their contempt. Their spectacle delivered a startling moment of awareness of the kind of person I could possibly become. Maybe even the kind of person I was already.

*

There exists a template for the story I am trying to tell, and it usually ends with overuse of the word “heterodox” and a spot on Bari Weiss’s podcast.

I am tired of being silenced, and will finally dare to articulate what everybody’s thinking, but is too afraid to say, because it’s not “politically correct.” That #MeToo has gone too far; the Orweillian left-wing language police; stop picking on Harry Potter’s mum; that poor professor who struggles to feed his family since getting fired for sleeping with his students; Jordan Peterson something something about lobsters.

The template goes that while one might even have been going through the motions of pledging allegiance to progressive ideals, we all eventually reach our breaking point (discomfort, annoyance, inconvenience, that irritating 20-year-old on Twitter, the advent of “Latinx”) and such principles are abandoned altogether.

Or, even worse: the zealot who exchanges one extreme for another, that proverbial former militant leftist who is now a men’s right activist something something lobsters.

But this is not that story.

This is not that template.