By John W. Whitehead
John Lennon, born 80 years ago October 9, 1940, was a musical genius and pop cultural icon.
He was also a vocal peace protester and anti-war activist, and a high-profile example of the lengths to which the Deep State will go to persecute those who dare to challenge its authority.
Long before Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning were being castigated for blowing the whistle on the government’s war crimes and the National Security Agency’s abuse of its surveillance powers, it was Lennon who was being singled out for daring to speak truth to power about the government’s warmongering, his phone calls monitored and data files illegally-collected on his activities and associations.
For a while, at least, Lennon became enemy number one in the eyes of the U.S. government.
The New York Times noted, “Critics of today’s domestic surveillance object largely on privacy grounds. They have focused far less on how easily government surveillance can become an instrument for the people in power to try to hold on to power.”
Indeed, all of the many complaints we have about government today, surveillance, militarism, corruption, harassment, SWAT team raids, political persecution, spying, overcriminalization, were present in Lennon’s day and formed the basis of his call for social justice, peace, and a populist revolution.
For all of these reasons, the U.S. government was obsessed with Lennon, who had learned early on that rock music could serve a political end by proclaiming a radical message. More importantly, Lennon saw that his music could mobilize the public and help to bring about change. Lennon believed in the power of the people. Unfortunately, as Lennon recognized: “The trouble with government as it is, is that it doesn’t represent the people. It controls them.”
What Lennon did not know at the time was that government officials had been keeping strict tabs on the ex-Beatle they referred to as “Mr. Lennon.”
Incredibly, the U.S. government, steeped in paranoia, was spying on Lennon.
By March 1971, when his “Power to the People” single was released, it was clear where Lennon stood. Having moved to New York City that same year, Lennon was ready to participate in political activism against the U. S. government, the monster that was financing the war in Vietnam.
The official U.S. war against Lennon began in earnest in 1972 after rumors surfaced that Lennon planned to embark on a U.S. concert tour that would combine rock music with antiwar organizing and voter registration. U.S. president Richard Nixon, fearing Lennon’s influence on about 11 Million new voters (1972 was the first year that 18-year-olds could vote), had the ex-Beatle served with deportation orders “in an effort to silence him as a voice of the peace movement.”
Lennon was the subject of a four-year campaign of surveillance and harassment by the U.S. government, spearheaded by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, an attempt by Nixon to have him “neutralized” and deported. Adam Cohen of The New York Times pointed out, “The F.B.I.’s surveillance of Lennon is a reminder of how easily domestic spying can become unmoored from any legitimate law enforcement purpose.”
The government’s paranoia, however, was misplaced.
Despite the fact that Lennon was not part of any “lunatic” plot to overthrow the government, the government persisted in its efforts to have him deported. Equally determined to resist, Lennon dug in and fought back. Every time he was ordered out of the country, his lawyers delayed the process by filing an appeal. Finally, in 1976, Lennon won the battle to stay in the country when he was granted a green card.
Lennon’s time of repose didn’t last long, however. By 1980, he had re-emerged with a new album and plans to become politically-active again.
The old radical was back and ready to cause trouble.
The Deep State has a way of dealing with troublemakers, unfortunately. December 8, 1980, Mark David Chapman was waiting in the shadows when Lennon returned to his New York apartment building. When Lennon stepped outside the car to greet the fans congregating outside, Chapman, in an eerie echo of the FBI’s moniker for Lennon, called out, “Mr. Lennon!”
Lennon turned and was met with a barrage of gunfire with Chapman’s dropping into a two-handed combat stance, emptying his .38-caliber pistol and pumped four hollow-point bullets into his back and left arm.
John Lennon was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital. He finally had been “neutralized.”
Yet where those who neutralized the likes of John Lennon, Martin Luther King Jr., John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Robert Kennedy, and others go wrong, is in believing that you can murder a movement with a bullet and a madman.
Although Lennon’s legacy lives on in his words, his music and his efforts to speak truth to power, unfortunately, not much has changed for the better in the world since Lennon walked among us.
Peace remains out of reach. Activism and whistleblowers continue to be prosecuted for challenging the government’s authority. Militarism is on the rise, with local police dressed similarly to the military, all the while the governmental war machine continues to wreak havoc on innocent lives across the globe.
For those of us who joined with John Lennon to imagine a world of peace, it’s getting harder to reconcile that dream with the reality of the American police state.
Meanwhile, I point out in my book, “Battlefield America: The War on the American People,” those who dare to speak up are labeled dissidents, troublemakers, terrorists, lunatics, or mentally ill, and tagged for surveillance, censorship, involuntary detention or, worse, even shot and killed in their own homes by militarized police.
Lennon shared in a 1968 interview: “I think all our society is run by insane people for insane objectives… I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal means.”
So what’s the answer?
Lennon had a multitude of suggestions:
• “If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.”
•“War is over if you want it.”
• “Peace is not something you wish for; it’s something you make, something you do, something you are, and something you give away.”
• “If you want peace, you won’t get it with violence.”
My musical favorite advice of all: “Say you want a revolution / We better get on right away / Well you get on your feet / And out on the street / Singing power to the people.”
—The Rutherford Institute