Meet Bizarro Greta Thunberg, Spawned From A Rightwing Think Tank

Your dad is mad about Greta Thunberg. The young climate activist (and 2019 Time Person of the Year) has a knack for pissing off conservative climate change deniers, who (falsely) accuse her for being a paid actor in the pocket of Big Left to spout propaganda and force the hands of honest, good-hearted conservatives into being gruesome assholes to a minor.

But it turns out that when the right is mad at Thunberg for being a blonde teenaged mouthpiece paid by political operators to spout extremist opinions, it's because they didn't think of it first. And it took a while, but conservatives have finally found their own Bizarro Greta Thunberg. Her name is Naomi Seibt, a German 19-year-old YouTuber who is the exact ideological opposite of the climate activist while being only a scowl and a braid away from being twinsies.

Not like the other Gen Z's, Seibt is sold as the cool girl of climate denial, and the antidote to Greta Thunberg's "shrill" brand of activism. A self-avowed climate skeptic, she feels that climate alarmists are overreacting, should stop being difficult, and whatever else is the climate denial version of "boys will be boys."

And Seibt's the whole Fox News anchor package: blonde, Germanic, and deeply right-wing. She's one "maybe Treblinka wasn't that bad" video away from earning her alt-right merit badge, already having spoken out against feminism, immigration, socialism, and "postmodernism" (a dog whistle for chinless ethnostatists about multiculturalism). She has also spoken at far-right German rallies and is about to do the same in the U.S., having been invited to share a platform with President Trump and Vice-President Pence at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

At this point, it's important to again note the other major difference between the two teen climate firebrands: Unlike Thunberg, who is constantly being accused of being a paid actor by conservatives. Naomi Seidt is in fact paid for by conservatives. The nineteen-year-old draws "an average monthly wage" of over $2,000 a month to serve as a spokesperson and appear in videos of the Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank with close ties to the Trump administration. And while Seibt herself prefers not to be called the Anti-Thunberg, her paymasters welcome the comparison, with one of the think tank's directors outright stating that "to the extent that Naomi is pretty much the same, just with a different perspective, yeah, I think that it's good that people will look at the two as similar in many ways."

And misinformation experts are already noting the ridiculous irony of the same people who smeared Greta Thunberg for being a strategic propaganda tool to now not only buy one of their own but for the express purpose "to create an equivalency in spokespeople and message." If Seibt has any value, it's for climate change deniers to point at her and go: "Look, we have a North European, blonde outspoken teenaged girl now too! That makes her crazy-ass points just as valid!"

For more weird tangents and feuds with his good twin, you can follow Cedric on Twitter.