Parasitic public memory: #ReclaimTheRainbow and the symbology of conservative victimhood

Abstract Drawing from Larson and McHendry’s (2019) concept of “parasitic publics,” this article examines how proponents of dominant culture reify their power by constructing memory narratives that co-opt rhetorics of victimhood and recast marginalized populations as their oppressors, a phenomenon we term “parasitic public memory.” Through analyzing the #ReclaimTheRainbow movement in which Christian conservatives position themselves as victims of queer communities’ symbolic appropriation of the rainbow, we identify three rhetorical functions of parasitic public memory narratives: the establishment of authority that declares the existence of a threat to the dominant social imaginary, militant calls to action that frame the dominant group’s oppression of actual marginalized groups as righteous resistance, and the advancement of co-constitutive ideologies that reify the dominant social imaginary.