Naomi Seibt German Activist Born 2000 in Münster

Early life

Naomi Seibt was born on 18 August 2000 in Münster, in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. She has said that her interest in politics grew in 2015, when she began attending political events. At that time she was critical of the Christian Democratic Union. She attended the Catholic Bischöfliches Gymnasium St. Mauritz in Münster and graduated in September 2017. At school she placed first in physics and second in mathematics in a regional round of the Jugend forscht junior competition.

Career

Seibt first drew attention at the age of 16, when a poem she wrote about nationalism was published on a blog as part of a competition run by the Alternative für Deutschland party. In May 2019 she began recording videos for YouTube with her mobile phone. The videos covered subjects including migration, feminism and climate change, and she described herself in them as a "climate realist". She presented herself as someone who had once shared mainstream views on climate and later changed her mind.

In November 2019 she spoke at the International Climate and Energy Conference in Munich, organised by the European Institute for Climate and Energy. The Süddeutsche Zeitung covered the appearance and described her as the conference's own counterpart to Greta Thunberg. A month later, on 3 December 2019, she was an invited speaker at a forum in Madrid held at the same time as the United Nations climate conference. She later also spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Maryland.

From late 2019 to April 2020 she was employed by the Heartland Institute, a United States think tank known for rejecting mainstream climate science. The institute promoted her in contrast to Thunberg, and some media outlets gave her the nickname "anti-Greta". In April 2020 she said that the formal arrangement had ended and that the decision not to renew her contract was her own. She linked it to a warning from a German media regulator, which she said had threatened to delete her YouTube channel because she was seeking to influence German politics for an American organisation.

Her online following grew in later years. In 2024 the owner of X reposted several of her videos, and an account with about 343,000 followers on that platform was recorded in December 2024, alongside a YouTube channel with about 113,000 subscribers in January 2025. In November 2025 she announced that she had applied for asylum in the United States.

Public roles

Seibt has described herself as a libertarian. News organisations and researchers have characterised her politics as far right, and several have criticised claims she has made about climate science, public health and other subjects. The Guardian reported in February 2020 that she had been influenced by a Canadian commentator whose views have been widely criticised. She and her family have denied that she supports far-right politics. Seibt has also denied that she is a puppet of the Heartland Institute or of climate sceptics, saying that her views are her own.

Her public profile rests on her videos, her speaking appearances and her presence on social media rather than on any elected office or formal position.