ATDTDA (3): Medium of truth, 84-85 #2

[Paul Nightingale]

Webb, on the other hand, is aware that the consequences might be misleading:
"Here was nitro, the medium of truth, being used by these criminal bastards
to tell their lies with" (85). Once one recognises that "the medium of
truth" is no such thing, merely a tool that can be appropriated and used by
anyone, it ceases to have the same political function: there is a separation
of signifier (explosion) and signified (opposition to the ruling class).
Lenin used a similar argument as part of his objection to anarchism, which
he termed 'bourgeois individualism in reverse'. Veikko sees no further than
the elimination of individuals whom he calls the enemy; whereas Webb, it
seems, is becoming aware that the act isn't necessarily an anarchistic
protest. We have already seen that AtD sets up the idea that anarchism,
whatever its status as a political philosophy, is also a label applied to
one's enemies, a label used to slander any and all opposition to the ruling
class. The acts that signify anarchism, eg blowing up a train, have no
intrinsic oppositional nature: hence, if the bosses are blowing up their own
factories and mines, the act effectively maintains the capitalist status
quo.

For Webb, then, the repetitive first act is that of having done something he
thought useful: if he has become disillusioned, this wasn't always so. He
attempts to reclaim the innocent state in which he believed he could make a
difference. Innocence here is childlike: "The first time Webb saw hard proof
of this going on, he felt like a kid about to cry" (85).