(Headline USA) A Biden administration Energy Department official has called on the U.S. to “queer” and disarm its nuclear weapons, according to Fox News.
Just last year, Sneha Nair, who was appointed as special assistant for the National Nuclear Security Administration in February, advocated eliminating “white supremacy” in the nuclear field and urged government officials to incorporate “queer theory” into the federal government’s energy policy.
“Queer theory informs the struggle for nuclear justice and disarmament,” she wrote at the time. “Queer theory helps to shift the perception of nuclear weapons as instruments for security by telling the hidden stories of displacement, illness, and trauma caused by their production and testing.”
Nair also argued that the Biden administration should implement diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, which she claimed were “essential for creating effective nuclear policy” because they could “prevent disgruntled employees from becoming insider threats.”
She went on to claim that white staffers at nuclear facilities didn’t have the ability to properly evaluate national security threats from people of their same racial group, such as white supremacists.
“Diversifying the perspectives included in nuclear security decision-making can expand the definition of who or what constitutes a ‘threat’ for nuclear security,” she wrote.
“The notion of ‘threat’ and ‘security’ are defined by the dominant culture, which inherently sidelines how marginalized groups … perceive ‘threats,’” she continued. “An example of this is the threat posed by some white supremacist groups to nuclear facilities may go undetected if a white-majority workforce does not perceive these ideological leanings as indicators of a relevant nuclear security threat.”
In a June 2023 article titled “Queering Nuclear Weapons,” Nair claimed “queer theory” could help “shine a light on the harm done by nuclear weapons through uranium mining, nuclear tests, and the tax money spent” on nuclear weapons.
“The queer lens prioritizes the rights and well-being of people over the abstract idea of national security, and it challenges the mainstream understanding of nuclear weapons—questioning whether they truly deter nuclear war, stabilize geopolitics, and reduce the likelihood of conventional war,” she wrote.
“Queer theory also identifies how the nuclear weapons discourse is gendered: Nuclear deterrence is associated with ‘rationality’ and ‘security,’ while disarmament and justice for nuclear weapon victims are coded as ‘emotion’ and a lack of understanding of the ‘real’ mechanics of security.”
