Benedict Anderson and "Imagined Communities"

In my experience I have found that some have either not read Anderson or misread him: some people only took away from the work of Anderson the title of his book.  But he never said "Imaginary communities" and he never implied that just because nations are a sort of imagined communities that they are not real forces to be reckoned with.  He was at pains to state that those are powerful forces and would repeat that people fight and die for those nations, and in that sense they are very real.