ust why would someone in 2015 want a Confederate flag on their license plate? The answer is likely not a desire to overtly display one’s genealogical research skills; nor can it be simplistically understood solely as an exhibition of racism, although the power of the Confederate flag to convey white supremacist beliefs cannot be discounted.

Rather, displaying the Confederate flag in 2015 is an indicator of a complex and reactionary politics that is very much alive in America today. It is a politics that harks back to the South’s proud stand in the Civil War as a way of rallying opinion against the federal government—and against the country’s changing demographic, economic, and moral character, of which Washington is often seen as the malign author. Today’s understanding of the Confederacy by its supporters is thus neither nostalgia, nor mere heritage; rather Confederate sympathy in 2015 is a well-funded and active political movement (which, in turn, supports a lucrative Confederate memorabilia industry).

For many, the initial attraction to the history of the Confederate States comes from an interest in ancestry and history, yet for others the lure is to a narrative that, replete with recognizable symbols and characters, offers (some) Americans the opportunity to understand themselves as historically distinctive. Add to this the attractive traits of heroism and an underdog struggle against numerical odds, plus a mantra that the Confederacy in the 19th Century fought to preserve all that was good and right about the America of the Founding Fathers, and a potent imaginary political world emerges.