On Michael Jordan's Mustache; or "is it happening here?"

A brief look at the "elusive fascist minimums"

The Mustache

You probably don’t remember it. He was already retired (thrice). Already two decades into playing underwear spokesman for Hanes, selling the most basic of basics in the most basic of ads. Then, one anonymous day in 2010, he showed up at Hanes HQ wearing what— if anyone else were to wear it— nearly anyone on planet Earth would call a “Hitler Mustache.”

Sure, some call it a “toothbrush mustache.” And sure, Charlie Chaplin wore it first—and better. But as Cosby is to a COOGI sweater, so has Hitler been to this bizarre little ‘stache for nearly a century and it cannot escape its reputation.

Until that moment I’d only seen one other person wearing it. I remember it vividly: a man, probably 70, in a green striped button-down and suspenders. He was eating a hotdog on the corner of 68th and Lexington, mustard spilling down his front. Jordan. Chaplin. Hitler. And that guy. Otherwise, to my knowledge it has been largely absent from the lips of the planet since.

So why, in the year of our lord 2010, in a random Hanes commercial, was Michael Jordan wearing that? Furthermore, why didn’t the folks at Hanes say, “I’m sorry, Your Airness, you seem to have missed a spot. Truly just a razor’s width… Would you mind, possibly, just… before, you know… we pay you millions of dollars to rep our Comfort Flex® waistband boxers?”

Most, it seems, simply chose to ignore it. Or to wish it away. What else could they do—invent some technicality to disqualify it? The length of the whiskers did seem a little off, after all, as did the density and distribution of the bristles: nowhere near the mudroom rug of a mustache Hitler kept. And wasn’t Jordan’s just a hair too narrow to qualify? Could he have, in other words, invented a hitherto unnamed micro-stache? Indeed, mightn’t that whisper of a soul patch hidden in the dimple beneath his lower lip qualify it as something altogether different - a sort of shy Van Dyke?

In short, we were faced with a tonsorial version of Sorites paradox: take one whisker away and eventually there will be nothing left. But the question remains: at what point does an ordinary mustache become the Hitler Mustache?

An anomaly perhaps, but also a fact—and a real decision—it is hard to say it is meaningless. But it is even more difficult to say what it means.

To be very, very clear, I do not think it means Jordan is a fascist. At all. It was, however, the first thing I thought of when I came across the conundrum Robert O. Paxton calls “the elusive fascist minimum.” Author of the germinal book The Anatomy of Fascism, the question for Paxton—and many others in recent years—has been: at what point is it useful to call a fascist a fascist?

And who decides?

And how?

Perhaps too glaringly obvious, in MJ’s case there is one highly superficial sign—a mustache. On its own, it is hardly enough to raise alarm bells. One single, obvious sign may prove to be as distracting as it is useful. Only his close friend Charles Barkley—known to be outspoken in all things—was willing to admit that which, in the final analysis, we must all concede to: Michael Jordan had a Hitler Mustache.

A notorious gambler, it may even be that Jordan simply lost a bet—at Hanes' expense. And yet, whether it was only for a day—for the duration of that shoot—however long it lingered on that lip, it continues to haunt me now.

A few weeks ago, when I told my mom I thought Donald Trump might be kind of a fascist and she seemed truly surprised: The Mustache flashed before my eyes.

The conversation occurred before Joe Biden’s disastrous debate; the supreme court immunity ruling; the foofaraw around Project 2025; the assassination attempt; the choice of J.D. Vance for running mate, and the furor over Kamala Harris’s meteoric rise.

And with each passing historic event, I glimpsed that odd little riddle hovering above Michael Jordan’s sphinxlike smile.

I don’t blame my mother for not having the same suspicions as me. I was hedging, uncertain of how useful the analogy might be to her; she, meanwhile, was likely living under the misapprehension that it should be obvious: the fascists we knew from history were rigid, programmatic, but above all they wore their allegiance on their sleeves—literally. Lacking such displays of heraldry, the question—if it even arises—must seem either too hard to answer or hardly worth asking.

She told me that she didn’t think that either candidate—Trump or Biden (at the time)—was right to lead the country. That, in that sense, they were largely interchangeable.

I don’t know how she’s voted since 2016 or what she plans to do this year. She is, however, a lifelong pro-life Republican; a woman who homeschooled me (and most of my six siblings) and, for one of our field trips, took us to see Pat Buchanan speak. I was like 9. Needless to say, Trump doesn’t conform to this image of a Republican, but nowadays she tends to stay largely out of the fray. To let go and let God, so to speak.

Our discussion was amicable and open, but I left it with an eerie sensation because I couldn’t say with certainty to what degree my assertion was true.

Similarly when I brought up the idea of Trump being a fascist with my father, he seemed only to have the loosest conception of fascism, leaving little space between it and other brands of authoritarianism. (As if Hitler’s and Stalin’s mustaches were the same.) This initial lack of understanding is entirely reasonable and yet, without seeking further definition, he turned immediately to considering whether issues within the Democratic party might be also be fascist. Wondering if they are just as much a threat as Trump— “Or more, even!”—while blaming what ails the Democrats and the US generally on what he interchangeably refers to as the “Clintonist cabal,” and the “deep state.”

To be honest, this felt like a distinctly Trumpian move: the counter question, a rhetorical pivot into home territory to distract from the question at hand. Still, even though I wouldn’t put it in his terms, I take seriously underlying issues he has with American governance—on both sides of the aisle—and the structure of the two-party system, particularly. Prior to Trump the past several decades have been marked by a centrist neoliberalism that feels akin to choosing between Pepsi and Coke. (Both bad for you, if that wasn’t clear.) The kind of centrism this system encourages has led to what I’ve heard described as an "anti-consciousness," ever more extreme polarization, and tribalism. Some, such as the critical theorist Herbert Marcuse, would even go so far as to call this a version of totalitarianism, since our current system only offers the illusion of choice while governance has largely shared by an amorphous group of elites in industry and politics.

My fear is that this choiceless choice has reduced the American populace to an unthinking mass, recalling Hannah Arendt’s warnings about the prime conditions for totalitarianism This fear that Arendt describes in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem entails an absence of will, an absence of thought. But such a phenomenon doesn’t constitute a sign of fascism, exactly. It does however imply promising conditions for fascism— at the follicular level, so to speak.

The opportunity is there, in other words, waiting for a political entrepreneur with a populist style to seize the moment.

I Started a Joke

To be honest, though, before my conversations with my parents, The Mustache had been on my mind for other reasons. Sad, and admittedly not very funny, I had found myself making an offhand joke when describing certain members of the community I grew up in. "They are," I’d say, "the kindest, most tender, gentle, loving fascists in the world."

Maybe I didn’t mean it, or I didn’t know how much I meant it, but as shameful as my joke may have been, the ambiguities it highlighted seemed emblematic to me of the political detente we find ourselves in. More importantly, it also illustrated for me how the social and familial enforcement of values may be playing out in the political realm. Which is to say, in my mother’s case, choosing between a party that permits abortion—the killing of babies, in her view—and a man whom, in all ways but one way, she may find entirely disagreeable.

I’m well aware I’m not the first to float the “fascist question” when it comes to Trump. Even J.D. Vance once wondered whether the man “might be America’s Hitler.” Ironically, before anyone could know anything about the shooter and his motivations, Vance wrote on X, “The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.”

Now, I’m not saying Vance’s past rhetoric is responsible for the assassination attempt—as he seems to attest—but I can fully agree rhetoric does matter. For this reason, even though I was only half-serious, my joke left a bad taste. This was not only because I was under-informed (at the time), but also because it felt reductive—even cruel, in its own way—and potentially counterproductive for me to think in these terms.

I imagined writing an article accusing Trump, in no uncertain terms, of being a fascist. Then I imagined it reaching exactly no-one whose minds might need changing. If it was true, what effect could the label have, other than shaming, alienating, or—worse yet—causing people to double down on their beliefs and actions?

Still, after the debate I, like many Americans, came away feeling there was very little Biden could do to rectify the situation; that Trump could win with ease. Then, for a moment, it felt like Trump could run his bloody ear and win in a landslide. When the Supreme Court threatened to expand executive powers in ways that may bring the American office of the Presidency closer to a dictatorship, obtaining a clearer view of what fascism is became a bit of an obsession.

So, I felt a little stuck.

The problem, as I saw it, was that the term “fascist” feels punitive, even terminal; it discourages or even disallows change, annulling the personhood and future political agency of the “accused.” I like how bell hook’s specified that she preferred not to call herself a feminist, but that she “advocates for feminism.” The difference is subtle, but it puts the emphasis on activity, engagement, and thought—not identity, which we too often still view as immutable.

The thing is, the more I read, the more convinced I became of fascism’s usefulness in understanding our historical moment. Perhaps a better way to think of it was as a lens, rather than a bludgeon. Rather than coming to a final answer to my quandary, to think in terms of constellations of signs, mutations and changes; to modulate in terms of degrees, consider strategies, and thus to differentiate means from ends. I also wanted to understand the pre-existing conditions which fascism grafts onto. Beginning with the admittedly silly metaphor like The Mustache feels useful precisely because it is disposable; to get a proper view of fascism, which often feels amorphous or hard to pin down, it feels important to approach it from as many angles as possible.

There are a little over 10 weeks before election day, and from now until then I plan to lay out as plainly as possible—in shorter, weekly or bi-weekly posts—the difficulties I’ve had in understanding the questions I’ve raised here, as well as what I’ve learned (and continue to learn) from the various histories, critical texts, contemporary articles, blogs, and reviews I’ve read. I recognize that my ignorance is likely shared by others, so seeking as broad and varied an understanding of the term “fascism” as possible has seemed like a worthy pursuit. I want to understand how a political mode as odious as fascism might mature and adapt, how it might develop defense mechanisms or camouflage itself. And I want to help others understand that too. I am, necessarily, not thinking about Trump alone, but about the culture that surrounds him, his advisors, mentors, and allies. The activities they support, encourage, invent, or resurrect from the past, with his help, and how this affects his followers.

In the end, it seems to me that we must each of us decide to be anti-fascist: that there should be no in-between. This is what I think of as the other “elusive fascist minimum.” The asymptotic ambition to excise any whiff of fascism from our lives and culture. To do so it seems to me we need to be able to analyze the characteristics of and conditions for fascism—in others, in our communities, and our laws, but also within ourselves— while developing strategies for ameliorating or extirpating the problem.

1. Not to be a conspiracy monger, but might this have been the cause of the recent end to the long and fruitful relationship between Hanes and MJ?

2. It may be helpful to think of totalitarianism as a general term, like a rectangle, and fascism as a square.