Naomi Seibt

In a 19 February 2020 interview with Die Weltwoche, Seibt stated that she had become interested in politics in 2015, when she was 14 and started to attend political events with her mother.[8][3] At the time, she was critical of the Christian Democratic Union of Germany (CDU). Seibt lives in the suburb of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia, with her sister and their mother, a lawyer who, according to The Guardian, "has represented politicians" from the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party.[3]

In September 2017 Seibt graduated from Gymnasium St. Mauritz Bischöfl, a Catholic high school. While there, she earned first place in physics during a local regional competition of the Jugend forscht, junior division, called "Students Experiment", and second place in mathematics.[9]

When Seibt was 16, her poem on nationalism, "Sometimes I Keep Silent", was published on David Berger's "anti-Islamisation"[3] blog Philosophia Perennis, as part of an AfD competition.[10][11]

Since May 2019, Seibt has recorded YouTube videos using her mobile phone[8] on topics ranging from "migration to feminism to climate change", according to The Washington Post.[12] In them, she calls herself a "climate realist".[6][7]

On 4 November 2019, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, one of Germany's largest daily newspapers, spoke of her appearance at the end of the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE)'s annual "International Climate and Energy Conference" held in Munich on 2 November, saying, "They have their own Greta. A climate change denier Greta." In her speech, Seibt said that before she started questioning a lot of things, like feminism and "cultural socialism", she too was a "climate alarmist" (translated from german).[13]

On 3 December 2019, Seibt spoke as an invited guest at the Madrid "Climate Reality Forum", a forum organized to rebut the United Nations' climate change warnings, while Greta Thunberg spoke at the 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP25) several miles away.[3][14] In 2019, Germany's AfD had embraced climate change denial as part of their political campaign in Europe, and were therefore, also aligned with EIKE.[15] She was the only woman invited to speak at an event that is "traditionally dominated by older men".[16]

Seibt has previously spoken at The Heartland Institute[17] and at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland, Seibt spoke to about a hundred conservatives.[18][3][7] Seibt dismisses allegations that she is a "puppet of the right wing or the climate deniers or the Heartland Institute either."[18]

On 28 February 2020, an article in The Guardian stated that Seibt was inspired by the Canadian alt-right, white nationalist and conspiracy theorist Stefan Molyneux after being introduced to his blogs.[17][19] She has been accused of both antisemitism and white nationalism due to her support for some on the alt-right. Seibt refused to comment, but her mother denies that her daughter supports far-right politics.[19]

In April 2020, Seibt said her formal work with The Heartland Institute had come to an end. She said that it was her decision not to renew a contract, and it was made because the Landesanstalt für Medien NRW threatened to delete her YouTube channel on the grounds that she wants to influence German politics for an American think-tank.[20]

Seibt has aligned herself as a paid conservative blogger who is being promoted as "Anti-Greta", in response to Greta Thunberg, aligning herself with the Alternative for Germany.[8][3][21] This image has been further propagated by The Heartland Institute, who compares her to Greta in promotional anti-climate change campaigns.[22] Seibt self-identifies as Libertarian.[6]

A 2020 joint investigation by Correctiv and Frontal21 revealed that The Heartland Institute's James Taylor considered Seibt to be the star of their "media strategy for the masses" in their "fight against climate protection measures" which "needs a better image"—to "move away from old white men and instead showcase a younger generation."[23]

The Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) described Seibt as a "right-wing Youtuber" who "attacks climate science in her videos".[24] The Guardian described her as a "so-called 'YouTube influencer' who tells her followers Thunberg and other activists are whipping up unnecessary hysteria by exaggerating the climate crisis".[3][Notes 1][25]

In an interview with The Washington Post, Graham Brookie, the director of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, commented on Seibt's approach to Thunberg's message on climate, in which she counters Thunberg's "I want you to panic" by saying in a video posted on Heartland's website that "I don't want you to panic. I want you to think". Brookie said in an email: "While it is not outright disinformation,[...] it does bear resemblance to a model we use called the 4d's — dismiss the message, distort the facts, distract the audience, and express dismay at the whole thing. The tactic is intended to create an equivalency in spokespeople and message. In this case, it is a false equivalency between a message based in climate science that went viral organically and a message based in climate skepticism trying to catch up using paid promotion".[12]

Seibt rejects being labeled as a climate change "denier", because according to her:

especially as a German, it is so rude to refer to someone as a climate denier because obviously there is a connection to the term ‘holocaust denier’, which carries a lot of weight in Germany.[1]

• Naomi Seibt on Twitter