The Schoolyard Politics of Fascism: 'The Conformist' (Alberto Moravia, 1951)
A review of The Conformist, by Alberto Moravia (1951)
A friend of mine once described fascism as “the school weirdos ordering around the school bullies”. I always found this metaphor strangely enlightening. Though fascism is often thought of as the triumph of uncompromising conformity, it could just as easily be seen as freakish idealism married to crude force. Indeed, the concept of universally enforced ‘normality’ is itself a strange twisting of the fuzzy phenomenon of ‘mainstream’ culture. All this is to say that looking at fascism through the lens of childhood neuroses is something that was deftly achieved by Alberto Moravia in his 1951 novel The Conformist.
The novel follows Marcello Clerici, a mid-level functionary in Italy’s fascist secret police. He has a respectable job, a doctorate, a wife, and the high regard of his community. He is not only quite a normal man, but a successful one at that. And Marcello wants it to be this way. He is ardent to maintain and advance this normality. So ardent, in fact, that when he is tasked with helping assassinate a prominent anti-fascist—his former university tutor—he proposes to use his own honeymoon as cover.
Yet Marcello does all this precisely because he does not feel normal. He knows he is different and hates himself because of it. He does not desire what normal people want and does not respond to things in the same way they do. It is in the strict morality of fascism that he hopes to find this longed-for conformity.
As the novels prologue shows, Marcello never ‘comes of age’. The disconcerting though affirming progression from adolescence to maturity does not occur for him, being blotted out by a traumatic childhood encounter with a paedophile. The Conformist is in a sense an anti-bildungsroman. For Marcello can never come to terms with his past. Despite appearing austere, his internal monologue shows a man prone to irrational fits of passion and melancholy, unable to maturely regulate his own emotions. It is telling that the conversations between Marcello and his old professor have the quality of an adult gently admonishing a child.
The appeal of Fascism is thus to him a kind of eternal mask. Aside from working for the fascists, he has almost no inclination towards their point of view. He does not particularly mind anti-fascists; feels complete indifference to the homosexual culture he encounters; and is not—outside its ability to signal normality—very concerned with traditional morality, at one point attempting to elope with another woman on his own honeymoon.
The Conformist demonstrates the uncomfortable truth that fascism has appeal beyond the hatred it inspires. For the lonely, confused and neurotic, its promise of freedom from choice is a deeply alluring prospect—one they can be willing to commit violence for. Fascism provides ready answers for people who, like Marcello, could never find any for themselves.
-Ben Shread-Hewitt