AMY GOODMAN: We want to pivot for a moment. As you travel the United States, your book is out, Doppelganger, in paperback, and the presidential election two weeks away, though millions upon millions of people have already voted. Kamala Harris, Donald Trump continuing to campaign in the battleground states. At a recent rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, Vice President Harris denounced Trump’s calls to confront what he calls “the enemy from within,” and played clips of Trump’s recent speeches.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: He tells us what he would do if he is elected president. So, here tonight, I will show you one example of Donald Trump’s worldview and intentions. Please roll the clip.

DONALD TRUMP: The worst people are the enemies from within. … The enemy from within. … Those people are more dangerous, the enemy from within, than Russia and China. … These people should be put in jail, the way they talk about our judges and our justice system. … Now, if you had one really violent day, … one rough hour — and I mean real rough. … I think the bigger problem are the people from within. We have some very bad people. We have some sick people, radical left lunatics. And I think they’re the — and it should be very easily handled by — if necessary, by National Guard or, if really necessary, by the military.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: So, you heard — so, you heard his words. You heard his words, coming from him. He’s talking about the enemy within Pennsylvania.

AMY GOODMAN: Meanwhile, former President Trump literally cursed when he talked about Kamala Harris during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

DONALD TRUMP: And this one, Kamala, is further left than them. So you have to tell Kamala Harris that you’ve had enough, that you just can’t take it anymore. We can’t stand you. You’re a [bleep] vice president.

AMY GOODMAN: Let’s just say his word rhymed with “hit.” Harris responded by saying Trump’s language, quote, “demeans the office.” Naomi Klein, if you can respond to this and then move into the conspiracy theories? You have people like Trump and Elon Musk who are saying things like, in Michigan, they have more voters than residents. But talk about it all. The word “stupid,” Trump uses repeatedly, all the time, when describing Harris, as well.

NAOMI KLEIN: Well, it’s extraordinarily racist. And, I mean, I think it’s really important that people take him at his word when he issues these threats, because the whole campaign, it’s built on a combination of sort of hate he can deliver on and economic fantasies he will not deliver on. Right? I mean, he’s not going to make everything perfect after he’s elected. Everybody isn’t going to be able to afford homes. Everybody isn’t going to have great-paying factory jobs. So the economic side is always a fantasy. But he has to deliver on something, which is why last time the things that he delivered on very quickly — right? — were the sort of easy — like the Muslim ban, you know, or there’s certain things he can do on climate that are very tangible, right? So, one of the first things he did last time was give approval for pipelines that had been suspended. And he’s promised oil companies that he would do — basically undo every single bit of climate legislation and give them huge tax breaks and so on. So, he’s saying it’s a great investment. “Give me a billion dollars, and you’ll get, you know, many billions back more.” That’s the kind of stuff he can deliver on, right?

So, I think that when you are telling people wild things that you absolutely cannot deliver on, when they’re saying that — and also there’s going to be violence and repression, that is very important that he will deliver on that, because he has to deliver on something. He can’t go and say, you know, “Sorry, I didn’t do any of it.” So, it’s that easy stuff. It’s that absolute punching down. It’s that sort of pleasure of at least you’re able to dominate, at least you’re able to release. And, you know, if we look at what hard-right, sort of strong-arm figures around the world have done when they’ve had that kind of power, they do do that.

So, I think it — you know, I am not a fan of Harris’s campaign, the choices she’s made. I think she’s running an extremely high-risk, dangerous campaign, because she is trying to win without the base. And she’s sending a message to that base that, “Sorry, you know, I’m more interested in Liz Cheney and Dick Cheney and getting Republicans than I am interested in listening to Palestinians, to Muslims, to Arabs, to the left generally, to the antiwar forces.” She’s told us we’re irrelevant, and Trump is telling us that he’s going to round us up. So, nobody would want this election, but we have got to be smart.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, you, in fact — just to go back, on Saturday, you spoke here in New York on a panel called “Beyond the Ballot: The Left in a Time of Polycrisis,” and you spoke about Kamala Harris’s decision or the campaign’s decision to focus on joy, so joy in this moment. If you could elaborate why you think that that was a problematic choice?

NAOMI KLEIN: Yeah, well, what I said there is that I think that they were confusing relief with joy. So, you know, that early sort of cathartic release after Joe Biden finally stepped down and people were dancing in the streets, they thought that that was a genuine reaction to what Harris represented, when I think it was just like a massive exhale, and that people don’t feel joy right now. People are dealing with very heavy doses of reality, whether it is the genocide in Gaza, whether it’s having their towns pummeled by climate events, whether it’s not being able to afford the basics of life. And so, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s wealthier, you know, well-educated people who are still resonating with Harris, and it’s people who are closest to the pain going, “What are you talking about? You know, this is not a joyful moment. You’ve got to earn our joy,” right?

And you mentioned the conspiracies that are happening. You know, this is really a continuation of the COVID sort of infrastructure of disinformation and misinformation. It got very, very strong in the COVID lockdowns. A lot of really sort of powerful information pathways were opened up. Once the public health measures were lifted, there were a lot of people looking for, you know, what’s going to be the next liftoff, what’s going to be the next issue that’s going to get all the clicks that they can monetize and so on. And now climate disasters are really providing that. So, it’s everything from — you know, climate change itself is presented as a hoax by the Davos elites in order to lock you in your home to eat bugs. But then they have to deal with the fact that people are encountering weather events that are very unnatural, so what’s the story for that? It’s the government who’s manipulating the weather. Why is the government manipulating the weather? Because they want to drown red states. Why aren’t they responding? Because they don’t want people to vote, and also they’ve given the money to migrants. So, it’s sort of a singularity of all the conspiracies. Who else who’s really behind it? It’s the Jews. I mean, it’s a whole mess of contradictory conspiracies.

AMY GOODMAN: And in this last 30 seconds, Elon Musk and his role right now, the richest man on Earth, saying he’ll give a million dollars out daily to voters?

NAOMI KLEIN: Right, that’s the real conspiracy, Amy. That’s the conspiracy in plain view. And the thing about this sort of — you know, I call it conspiracy culture, because it isn’t a theory. What it is is a distraction machine. It’s a smoke machine that’s just keeping us from looking at the conspiracies that we can prove, that investigative journalists have proved, that are out in the open, like Trump saying, “Give me a billion dollars,” to the oil companies, “and I’ll roll back environment regulations,” that will drive more hurricanes to your front door, everyone, right? Or Elon Musk, whose entire business model is just about getting subsidies from the government, and buying a platform that one man should never have been allowed to own, you know, our information commons.

Of course they want us distracted with this nonsense, because if we weren’t distracted with that, then that deep sense that something is not well and that we really have deep problems to solve would be directed up at them. So they always have to direct it down. That’s also why we have to be concerned about Trump. He will always direct the — he will harness that rage, and he will direct it at the most vulnerable.

AMY GOODMAN: Naomi Klein, professor of climate justice at University of British Columbia. Her book is just out, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World. It’s in paperback.