Unironically I think his look plays a large part in that. Because the long hair and goatee/beard look is on every dirty hippy and lib professors for going half a century now. So the unconscious stereotype part of our brain just instantly wires that idea to us without thinking about it.
Its a recent invention, but its also fresh in the minds of everybody who lives in the last few generations. That makes it even more likely to cause such an association.
Unironically I think his look plays a large part in that. Because the long hair and goatee/beard look is on every dirty hippy and lib professors for going half a century now. So the unconscious stereotype part of our brain just instantly wires that idea to us without thinking about it.
This despite the fact that he lived in a time when almost every adult male in Judea would have looked like that, lol…
I imagine shaving probably made you a bit of an outlier, in that time…
Unlike (mostly) today.
Same with Mohammedans and beards, or the Sikh hair thing, obviously…
The “long hair and beard = hippie/communist” thing is a much, much more recent inversion, obviously…
Its a recent invention, but its also fresh in the minds of everybody who lives in the last few generations. That makes it even more likely to cause such an association.