Thin blue and red line12/7/2023 bans ‘thin blue line’ flags after football player carried one to honor coach. If you’ve ever wanted to see what the Thin Blue Line looks like… /m23owl6TDQĬhardon Ohio school district Schools Superintendent Michael P. Thin Blue Line is often lowercased when referring to either law enforcement or Thin Blue Line flags. The flag has become controversial over the years, especially as it’s borne by far-right groups such the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer as it’s perceived to politicize the role of law enforcement and the symbolism of the American flag. The basic idea has been extended in the 20th century to apply to police officers, as The Thin Blue Line, in reference to the frequently blue color of police uniforms. The T hin Blue Line is used to refer to police officers generally and the Thin Blue Line flag. The reference was soon shortened into the thin red line, and famously described by Rudyard Kipling in the poem Tommy as 'the thin red line of eroes. In June 2020, NPR reported that the Thin Blue Line flag had become so controversial that citizens in one small town saw it as a racist symbol of hate and noted the flag connoted “opposition to the goals of ending police brutality and systemic racism.” In 2020, the Thin Blue Line flag has been used by far-right extremist groups and controversial movements such as Blue Lives Matter. Jacobs and his company Thin Blue Line USA fiercely denounced the use of their flag at the rally and said “We reject, in the strongest possible terms, any association of our flag with racism, hatred, and bigotry.”ĭespite its creator’s attempts to prevent the Thin Blue Line flag from becoming a symbol of hatred, many people would come to see it that way over the following years. In 2017, for example, white supremacists and neo-Nazis waved Thin Blue Line flags at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. Over the next several years, pro-police counterprotestors and extremist groups would use Jacob’s Thin Blue Line flags at rallies and demonstrations. However, he has stated he did not create the flag as a reaction to the Black Lives Matter anti-police violence movement per se. Jacob says that “patches and stickers” of the image of the Thin Blue Line at a Black Lives Matter protest inspired him to create a flag of this image. However, the flag now commonly associated with the phrase Thin Blue Line was created in 2014 by college student Andrew Jacob. The symbol of the Thin Blue Line (a black square with a blue line running horizontally across the middle) dates back to the 1950s. In the 1990s, Rowan Atkinson starred in The Thin Blue Line, a British police comedy series. A 1950s community television program used the name Thin Blue Line to communicate information from police to the public. The phrase would catch on with police officers and politicians-and also the media. New York police commissioner Richard Enright may have been the first to use Thin Blue Line to refer to police in 1922 as he responded to criticism of his leadership. The 1911 poem “The Thin Blue Line” by Nels Dickmann Anderson uses the phrase to refer to American soldiers (who wore blue) fighting against the British. It seems to have been inspired by a British regiment, called the Thin Blue Line, that stood against Russian cavalry charges during the Crimean War of 1854. The phrase Thin Blue Line is old, and its exact source is unknown.
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