Thin blue line
Figurative reference to the position of police in society / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The "thin blue line" is a term that typically refers to the concept of the police as the line between law and order and chaos in society.[1] The "blue" in "thin blue line" refers to the blue color of the uniforms of many police departments. The thin blue line symbol has been used by the Blue Lives Matter movement since 2014,[2] and it has become emblematic of white nationalist, neo-Nazi, and alt-right movements in the US, particularly displayed by attendees of the Unite the Right rally in 2017 and the January 6 Storming of the US Capitol in 2021.[3][4]
The phrase originated as an allusion to The Thin Red Line incident during the Crimean War in 1854, wherein a Scottish regiment—wearing red uniforms—famously held off a Imperial Russian Army cavalry charge. Its use referring specifically to the police was popularized by Los Angeles Police Department Chief William H. Parker during the 1950s; author and police officer Joseph Wambaugh in the 1970s, by which time "thin blue line" was used across the United States;[5] and Errol Morris's documentary The Thin Blue Line (1988).[6]
The "thin blue line" symbol has been used by the "Blue Lives Matter" movement, which emerged in 2014 as a rebuttal to the Black Lives Matter movement, and gained traction following the high-profile homicides of NYPD officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu in Brooklyn, New York.[2][7][8][9][10] The "thin blue line" has also been associated with white nationalists in the US, particularly after the Unite the Right rally in 2017,[3][4] who fly Thin Blue Line flags at their rallies.[11]