“Where this age differs from those immediately preceding it is that a liberal intelligentsia is lacking. Bully-worship, under various disguises, has become a universal religion, and such truisms as that a machine-gun is still a machine-gun even when a "good" man is squeezing the trigger”

— George Orwell

Review of Power: A New Social Analysis by Bertrand Russell in The Adelphi (January 1939); Paraphrased variant: Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.
Context: If there are certain pages of Mr Bertrand Russell's book, Power, which seem rather empty, that is merely to say that we have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. It is not merely that at present the rule of naked force obtains almost everywhere. Probably that has always been the case. Where this age differs from those immediately preceding it is that a liberal intelligentsia is lacking. Bully-worship, under various disguises, has become a universal religion, and such truisms as that a machine-gun is still a machine-gun even when a "good" man is squeezing the trigger — and that in effect is what Mr Russell is saying — have turned into heresies which it is actually becoming dangerous to utter.

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George Orwell 473

English author and journalist 1903–1950

James Nicoll (1961) Canadian fiction reviewer

[e2s3p4$ofd$1@reader1.panix.com, 2006]
2000s

“The oppression is growing, and anyone who has had to submit to the Tempter's machine-gun fire during this last week thinks differently from what he did even three weeks ago.”

Martin Niemöller (1892–1984) German anti-Nazi theologian and Lutheran pastor

Last sermon before being imprisoned by the Nazi regime of Germany (27 June 1937), as quoted in Religion in the Reich (1939) by Michael Power, p. 142

“We are going to shoot them, they are going to run; We are going to shoot them, with the machine gun; They are going to run. You are a white man – We are going to hit them – and you are going to run! Shoot the Boer! We are going to hit them – they are going to run! The Cabinet will shoot them with the machine gun! The Cabinet will shoot them with the machine gun! Shoot the Boer!”

Jacob Zuma (1942) 4th President of South Africa

Singing to supporters at ANC celebrations in Bloemfontein on 8 January 2012, Is Jan van Riebeeck really the cause of all SA's misfortunes? http://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/is-jan-van-riebeeck-really-the-cause-of-all-sas-mi, Dave Steward (16 January 2015)
Jacob Zuma sings kill the Boer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb3MLHblnbQ, youtube