After that, it was worn by every yokel who dreamed of greatness. ![]() Before that, it had been an elite fashion shared by the dandies and swells of Berlin and Vienna. In the years before the First World War, the Toothbrush was taken up by a German folk hero, which is the moment it became a craze. In 1907, The New York Times chronicled a growing distaste for the import under the headline "toothbrush" mustache: german women resent its usurpation of the "kaiserbart." In other words, in the case of Hitler and his 'stache, America faced an extreme case of blowback.īy the beginning of the century, it had been taken up by enough Germans to draw notice in the foreign press. It was the old, monarchical world that was about to be crushed by the rising tide of assembly-line America. It was perfumed, styled, teased and trained. It was called the Kaiser, and it was elaborate. Before that, the most popular mustache in Germany and Austria had been the sort worn by the royals. It was a bit of modern efficiency, an answer to the ornate mustaches of Europe-pop effluvia that fell into the grip of a bad, bad man. The Toothbrush mustache was first introduced in Germany by Americans, who turned up with it at the end of the 19th century the way Americans would turn up with ducktails in the 1950s. These days, you see it only on Halloween, or at reunion shows of Crosby, Stills & Nash. It was worn by the pistol-flashing Mexican bandito as he chased gringos through the border towns along the Rio Grande. Or think of the long, droopy Pancho Villa. It is named for Sax Rohmer's (racist) villain from the golden age of Hollywood, the bad guy from the B movies who became a symbol for the creeping Asian menace. Like the Fu Manchu, in which long tresses hang to the chin, where they can be stroked as the madman laughs. The greatest are identified with a single man, a bad man, usually, who so wrapped his identity with a particular configuration of facial hair that the two became inseparable. (The history of the razor is longer than the history of the mustache, but only by a few minutes.) Most mustaches lie waiting for some Clark Gable or Tom Selleck to fix them in the mind. The Imperial, the Walrus, the Stromboli, the Handlebar, the Horseshoe, the Mustachio (also called the Nosebeard or the Fantastico), the Pencil, also called (by idiots) the Mouthbrow-the catalogue is illustrious. My name is Rich Cohen, and I wear a Hitler mustache. I wanted to reclaim it for America and for the Jews. I grew it for the same reason Richard Pryor said the word "nigger." I wanted to defuse it. If you're a Jew, the Hitler mustache exists in the eternal present. I might talk about the re-emergence of facial hair on the world stage, or the rise of the "new anti-Semitism," or Holocaust denial in Iran, but, the fact is, my interest in the Hitler mustache never started and never ends. This is the part where I am supposed to explain just why I decided to write this story now. It was the history of our time retold as the story of the 'stache. It was a pinprick through which I could see the old scene from a fresh angle. The Toothbrush mustache offered a new way to look at the past. ![]() From that moment, I became wrapped up in facial hair, and the role it has played in politics. It was the mustache! From that moment, I stopped shaving. To which Dawkins (in essence) replied: both Stalin and Hitler wore mustaches-do we therefore think the mustache was the cause of their behavior? I experienced this as an epiphany: By Jove! I said to myself. A few nights earlier, I had seen Richard Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion, interviewed by Bill O'Reilly, who, citing Stalin and Hitler, said he thought atheists, because of their lack of restraining faith, were more susceptible to evil. ![]() An inch of hair that speaks of bottomless evil. Until I started this story, I had only one name for the thing in mind: a Hitler mustache.
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