Confederate flags in the rural non-south

I'm not quite sure how many times I've seen the Confederate Battle Flag being flown in rural California, but it is certainly more than I would expect outside the South. Given that Southerners often defend flying the flag as "heritage not hate," seeing it where there's no heritage to speak of is surreal. Then why fly the flag? 

 Media coverage on the topic rarely offers a compelling explanation. The articles typically follow a similar format, with interviews of the flag-waivers disclaiming racist intent countered with interviews of historians that emphasize the white supremacist character of the Confederacy. For example, NPR reports that Feeling Kinship With The South, Northerners Let Their Confederate Flags Fly, with the subjects sympathizing with the confederate cause of "fighting for states' rights, and the freedom to make their own way and to choose their own way against a tyrannical federal government."

The article highlights historian Rachel Jelks for the position that the flag represented defending the institution of slavery. But it frames this as merely an alternative view by introducing her simply as one of "many others" who believe this. Her credentials are mentioned, but the article does not seem to treat hers as the correct position. 

 Subjects frequently invoke current government overreach in justifying flying the flag. A Columbus Dispatch article has an Ohioan clarifying that the flag symbolizes his "distaste for the Federal Government." In their view, the war was primarily an issue of federal overreach, and so fly the flag as a stand against current overreach.

This reflects the mythological Lost Cause narrative of the Civil War, where slavery did not cause the conflict and the secession justified by the tyranny of the federal government. While directly contradicted by the historical record, it gained significant traction in the 20th century and became the default understanding of the Civil War for many. While the beliefs of the flag waivers are not out of the ordinary, it is still unclear why that particular symbol is utilized as opposed to other less inflammatory symbols.

These reports largely interpret the phenomenon as individualistic and fail to articulate any overarching theory. One exception is a 2022 article by David Graham in The Atlantic, which addresses the political divide on removing confederate monuments. He uses a contemporary poll to argue that "support for Confederate symbols and monuments follows lines of race, religion, and education rather than geography."

Graham finds through the poll that "non-southerners feel the same way about Confederate monuments that southerners do." What was once a regional difference had become nationalized. And he joins a number of other political scientists in identifying the urban-rural divide as the most significant political divide in our country today. 

Will Wilkinson is one of the more strident proponents of this theory. He supplements his 2019 report The Density Divide with a Substack article that argues that rural America has gone through "southernification." He acknowledges a lack of empirical evidence for this effect, but sees it as necessary to unify rural whites into a "single constituency."

 A 2025 New York Times Op-Ed similarly argues that aspects of rural, country, and southern identity have all merged into a mainstream "rural" aesthetic that is exploited by populist politicians like Donald Trump. They go a bit too far with this approach by attributing too much of modern culture to this aesthetic, but they do accurately identify how Southern culture has become de-regionalized.

Simply looking at history reveals a simpler explanation. A Black Perspectives article highlights how activists donned Klan hoods and waved the Confederate Flag at an anti-civil rights event in the Bronx. In that context, it seems difficult to ignore the racist history of the flag in attempting to explain its modern usage outside of the south.