Mirror Worlds and Shadow Lands

"Doppelgänger" reflections, part two

Lost in the labyrinth of social media and selfie culture, as envisioned by AI

(Part One is here)

Naomi Klein’s Doppelgänger begins with an investigation into her uncanny relationship with Naomi Wolf, but spirals out from there to explore many aspects of our contemporary dilemma. The book inspired me with a new idea I am thinking about now: To try to build a new media platform as an antidote to Steve Bannon’s War Room (which, I admit, I have never seen in full). I will flesh out some thoughts about this later.

I actually met Steve Bannon once — stood close enough to scry his bristly nose hairs and count the rumples in his plaid shirt — and we exchanged some messages, which, sadly, I have since lost. I met him at a crypto-related art opening in New York through Brock Pierce, the former child actor turned Bitcoin billionaire, Balinese-leather-vest-sporting Burner, and Presidential hopeful. Pierce briefly tagged me to run the massive foundation he claimed he was going to start, saying he would donate his entire crypto fortune to this world-changing enterprise. I dutifully wrote out an action plan for how we could make use of the funds. Unsurprisingly, it never happened.

When Pierce was a teenager, he started a company hiring poor Asian teenagers to play World of Warcraft and “mine” weapons and artifacts that he would then sell to other WoW players, mainly in the US and Europe, who didn’t have the time or patience to amass their own treasures. This soon became a business with monthly revenues in the millions, even though the company that made the game refused to endorse it. Bannon ran the company for Pierce, and they have remained close ever since.

What most interested me about Bannon was his avowed interest in esotericism and the occult. I knew he was influenced in his thinking by “Traditionalists” like Julius Evola and Rene Guenon, who believe we are in the final, degenerate stage of the Kali Yuga before complete destruction and eventual recreation. Bannon is also a fan of the Russian Apocalyptic philosopher Alexandr Dugin, an inspiration for Putin, who promotes Moscow as the “New Rome,” destined to win the final war against the degenerate American Babylon. We also talked about Ken Wilber and Gurdjieff, whose work Bannon knows well.