Bald men are furious at a viral chart placing them at the fascist end of the political spectrum, and the creator’s response made it worse

A TikTok video assigning male haircuts across a political spectrum from fascism to communism has gone viral and is drawing strong reactions, particularly from bald men who had no say in the matter. The chart, posted by account @trustdcritics, bills itself as the “horseshoe theory of male haircuts,” with the creator claiming it is about 75 percent accurate. As highlighted by the Daily Dot, the creator even invited viewers to suggest haircuts for placement if they didn’t see them on the chart.

The chart maps common male hairstyles across the political spectrum. The liberal section features a short, unstyled cut, while further left brings longer hair, man buns, and blue dye. On the right, slicked-back cuts represent corporate capitalists, leading toward buzz cuts and the Hitler Youth style. At the fascist end of the spectrum, hair disappears entirely.

The chart also includes a 12th-century monk cut with no connection to the Catholic Church’s actual dress code, and the creator’s own framing is visible throughout, from labeling one section “lunatic fringe” to placing “hedonism” near the progressive end of the spectrum.

Bald men in the comments were not having it

The most vocal group in the comments were bald men, furious at the implication that their lack of hair aligns them with fascism. User @worstingame commented, “I am bald and would never be moved beyond the blue/green zone. This is about as accurate as Phrenology.” User @kylepilling7 wrote, “Acting like I woke up one day and chose baldness.”

“Brother, I don’t have hair. It’s not a cut,” wrote @benhargett. User @deeznewtsinmypants noted they shave their head weekly and have not voted Republican since 2008, questioning whether any correlation between hairstyle and politics exists at all. Amid the broader backlash over creator responses to audience criticism, seen in stories like Fruit Love Island’s fallout with fans over a TikTok blackout, @trustdcritics’ handling of the blowback did little to calm things down.

Beyond baldness, other commenters noted their actual haircuts did not match their supposed political placement on the chart. User @shrek.disciple pointed out another flaw by simply stating, “I’m black,” highlighting the chart’s failure to account for the range of Black men’s hairstyles, making the 75 percent accuracy claim harder to defend.

The chart’s invocation of “horseshoe theory” borrows from an actual political science concept. The theory, often attributed to French philosopher Jean-Pierre Faye, holds that the far-left and far-right resemble each other more closely than either does the center, with Faye applying it to German political parties in 1932. Others have attributed variations of the theory to American sociologists Seymour Martin Lipset and Daniel Bell, as well as German political scientist Eckhard Jesse.

The theory has surfaced in various political discussions over the years. In 2006, political scientist Jeff Taylor suggested the left and right function as two components of populism, with elitism at the center. In 2008, Josef Joffe used the term to describe populist gains in Germany and Austria, and in 2015, reformist Muslim Maajid Nawaz invoked it to criticize blacklisting tendencies across both extremes. More recently, it was cited in relation to far-right and far-left support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and when former BNP leader Nick Griffin endorsed Workers Party of Britain leader George Galloway in February 2024.

Despite its presence in public discourse, horseshoe theory has limited academic support. A 2011 study on the French presidential election found that far-left and far-right voters did not occupy the same political space, share the same social background, or hold the same values. A 2012 study concluded that adherents to extreme left-wing and right-wing ideologies do not resemble each other, and that different extremes attract different people.

A 2019 study found that speaking of “extreme left-wing values” or “extreme right-wing values” may not be meaningful, as members of both groups are heterogeneous in the values they endorse. Research on antisemitism from 2022 further contradicted the theory, finding that the far-left showed lower agreement with antisemitic statements compared to moderates, while agreement increased moving from left to right. Amid wider debates over political polarization, including congressional disputes over TSA and federal authority, critics of the theory argue it flattens fundamental ideological differences for the sake of a tidy analogy.

Scholars including Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons argued in their 2000 book Right-Wing Populism in America that perceived far-left and far-right overlap is an oversimplification that ignores core differences and risks legitimizing far-right ideology. Simon Choat, a senior lecturer in political theory at Kingston University, called horseshoe theory nonsense in a 2017 article, arguing that while both extremes oppose the liberal democratic status quo, they do so for different reasons and with different aims, and that centrists have historically supported far-right regimes over socialist ones.