Various people know that John Lennon has anti-system views. Just like in “Give Peace a Chance” and “Imagine” songs, Lennon especially used his social status to raise awareness for war and discrimination rather than hiding his thoughts. John Lennon was a humble Liverpool boy and despite being at the center of attention with the achievements of The Beatles, he never turned his back to social problems and the problems of the individuals he was raised among.
The unknown fact about John Lennon was his relationship with socialism. In that period, the torture of communists in the US was well-known. Lennon donated 46 thousand pounds to leftist groups including Trotskyist organization Revolutionary Labor Party and Marxist Red Mole magazine.
It seems conflicting for Lennon with discourses against using violence for change to donate Marxists who believe violence is unavoidable in the name of socialism. This could be explained by the fact that Lennon did not have certain decisions about the revolution that uses violence. The Beatles song “Revolution” had the lyrics “We all want to change the world,
But when you talk about destruction,
Don’t you know that you can count me out”? The previous recording before the released version said “count me in” rather than “count me out”. But the song was changed because Lennon was not sure about the political discourse. Other members of the Beatles were unsettled with the revolutionary tone of the lyrics. The views of the people are shaped by the people around them and these views can change over time. Independent of whether Lennon approved violence or not, the American system was afraid of him. Richard Nixon even involved the FBI to deport John Lennon.
Under the plan to deport Lennon who criticized The War of Vietnam that covered between 1971 – 1972, FBI created a 300-page long file. The case was published by the end of 2006. A sentence from the report said: “The doubt that Lennon has revolutionary views is supported with official meetings with the Marxist, his songs and other published content.”
The conservative US was afraid of John Lennon’s radicalism and to use his position to spread anti-war and anti-capitalist views.
Whether Lennon was seen as a pacifist or Trotskyist revolutionary, he used his music and visual existence to spread certain ideas around the world. Without being afraid of the consequences of his views that he supported without taking a step back, he used his fame to change certain things without forgetting his social class. Lennon was more than a fashionable hippie; he was the hero of the working class.
