Comment by milesrout
10 months ago
That is a very strange take. The phrase isn't American and has no negative connotation. It has nothing to do with "extrajudicial punishment". It simply refers to the (obvious) fact that what separates societies from anarchy is the "thin blue line" of law enforcement.
Rowan Atkinson had a sitcom set in a London police station in the 90s called "The Thin Blue Line". Are you under the impression he was dogwhistling about extrajudicial violence?
This is what really confused me about the article. I read the mailing list post and had no idea what was controversial about thin blue line. In fact, I thought most of that post was fairly reasonable.
I'd never heard of the extrajudicial punishment aspect of the phrase (though I had heard the phrase itself) and it didn't show up when I googled, but I'm not American, so maybe there's some cultural differences.
"Thin blue line" is a popular phrase of the so called "American culture war". During the heyday of the Black Lives Matter movement, it was used as a self-identification by those who did not agree with criticisms of the nations policing and justice systems. A closely related symbol is the Punisher[0] skull from Marvel comics.
[0]: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/punisher-skull
All in all, this could just be another instance of the "culture war" inflaming every other minor disagreement with Ted playfully using the phrase and Marcan misinterpreting it. Or it could be Ted slipping up with their politics. From what I know about Marcan and what can be inferred from his post, they do seem like someone the alt-right would persecute.
Wow, hadn't heard of the punisher skull association either! It seems that it hasn't really traveled that much outside of America.
I had a look, and it seems that Ted Ts'o is American, so I guess we should assume he understands the cultural significance of the phrase (even though I didn't).
All the extrajudicial stuff is pure political and ideological wank by a subset of ideological extremists. Pay no attention to any of it. It's an attempt to redefine the term for narrative creation purposes.