TRAPPED IN 1972: Haaaaa! No Kings Rally Was So Organic They Literally Handed Out Instructions on How to Protest (Pic).
Of course it is:
On the other hand, it’s awfully subversive of whoever suggested “Imagine” be played at the No Kings (well, Some Kings) rally, considering that near the end of his tragically short life, Lennon (allegedly) supported an earlier Hitler himself: Working class hero? John Lennon ‘was closet conservative and fan of Reagan.’ “But by the time he died, John Lennon was a closet conservative embarrassed by his radical past, according to his former personal assistant. Fred Seaman claims that the former Beatle was a fan of Ronald Reagan, who went on to become America’s Republican president in 1981 and forged a close political alliance with Margaret Thatcher. ‘John, basically, made it very clear that if he were an American he would vote for Reagan because he was really sour on [Democrat] Jimmy Carter,’ he says in a documentary film.”
Because of Lennon’s murder, and because so much footage exists of him recording the Imagine album in 1971, his radical chic image has become freeze-dried. But it was simply another phase for Lennon, in-between the psychedelia of the mid-‘60s, the booze-fueled “lost weekend” of the mid-‘70s, his house husband phase raising his son Sean few years later, and his return to recording near the end of the ‘70s.
As Lennon himself said in one his last interviews, “I dabbled in politics in the late 1960s and 1970s, more out of guilt than anything. Guilt for being rich and guilt thinking that perhaps love and peace isn’t enough and you have to go and get shot or something, or get punched in the face to prove I’m one of the people. I was doing it against my instincts.”
UPDATE:
NBC Boston describing the 'No Kings' protest: “An older crowd, a lot of white hair. You see Q-tips as we used to call them in the business… Not a lot of young people”
— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) October 19, 2025