I don’t see how you can make a good faith argument the confederate flag is any different from a swastika. Both represent institutions built solely for racist motives and the subjugation of another race.
The stars'n'bars is a relevant part of automotive history, see the Duke brothers, history of NASCAR, etc. Banning players who display it is similiar to banning players who stick swastikas or iron crosses on their Panthers and Tigers in a video game about tanks.
Culturally convenient or not it is part of the history of the subject matter and likewise it should stay.
NASCAR has banned the flag too[1], and the modern General Lee[0] hasn't had it since 2015. And the point of these games isn't to simulate car culture or history, it's a racing game, so it's not even relevant. We're literally just talking about skins in a video game, here.
[0]https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/10/us/nascar-bans-confederate-fl...
[1]https://golfweek.usatoday.com/2020/06/16/bubba-watson-says-l...
you think that racism and racial subjugation were the PRIMARY motives for National Socialists?
The swastika was used by multiple cultures for thousands of years before it was co-opted by the Nazis.
The confederate flag was created for the sole purpose of committing treason so that some people could enslave others.
Not even remotely the same thing.
Secession is not treason. The Tenth Amendment reads in whole: 'The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people'; the Constitution does not delegate the power of separating a state from the union to the United States, nor does it prohibit secession to the individual states, nor does it mandate a perpetual or irrevocable union; therefor it is plainly true that secession is constitutional.
Moreover, the same Constitution states 'Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.' Neither advocating for secession nor actually seceding consists of levying war against the U.S. or adhering to their enemies.
One might argue that the secessions of Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee & North Carolina, coming as they did after the battle of Fort Sumter, constituted treason, but one might instead argue that secession itself was not adhering to the enemies of the U.S., but rather those states removing themselves from the union.
None of the following is support for any of the actual secessions of any of the states: each state which seceded did so to preserve the profoundly evil practice of slavery. It is constitutional to secede, but deeply wrong to have done so for that reason.
But it is extremely important to be precise about words. The Confederates were evilly wrong about slavery and race, but they were not traitors.
The election of Lincoln and John Browns raid were threatening to the south exactly because of their threat to slavery. The south was not only paranoid of a slave uprising, but also owned people was the bulk of their wealth.
I think this skeptics SE is pretty good summary:
https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/16275/was-slave...
And the Cornerstone Speech by the VP of the confederacy:
> Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition.
The "states rights" trope was a deliberate attempt of a few Southern, revisionist historians to blunt their racist past. The truth is that the South seceded because their states wanted the right to hold slaves.
https://studycivilwar.wordpress.com/2017/04/18/the-extent-of...
Question #1: Name three states rights the South supposedly aruged for.
Question #2: Count how many of those rights they actually granted to their own states.
For it being supposedly such a major factor in their succession, states rights are conspicuously silent in both the ordinances of succession, contemporary oratory, and in the text they wrote in their own Constitution.
Slavery was the tipping point but the conflict goes much deeper than that.
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...
States rights... to own slaves.
The historical record written in the confederacy's own words disagrees with you.
The Declaration of Causes of Seceding States shows slavery up front and center. These Declarations from five states, Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia include the word "slave" 83 times. (https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/declarati...)
Mississippi: "Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery"
Georgia: "For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery...The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by [the northern Union's] leaders and applauded by its followers. The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of [the northern Union]. For forty years this question has been considered and debated in the halls of Congress, before the people, by the press, and before the tribunals of justice. The majority of the people of the North in 1860 decided it in their own favor. We refuse to submit to that judgment, ..."
South Carolina: "A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery."
Texas: "[Texas] was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race ..."
The Confederate states certainly didn't respect the right of the Northern states to terminate slavery, and indeed forced through a number of laws (prior to the Civil war) requiring the Northern states to participate in the return of escaped slaves.