it's really far too easy to take lennon out of context, and completely misunderstand him.

yes - he sang "give peace a chance". but, he was also a substantial financial contributor to the black panthers, and had the american intelligence groups all over him because of it. the right-wing rhetoric about terrorism aside, the black panthers were not pacifists. what you're missing is context - he was specifically talking about pointless colonial wars, and the rhetoric should not be extrapolated from a specific to a universal.

he was interested in the traditions of other cultures - he was after all a white englishman performing black rock music in germany in the late 50s - but it was always with a concept of post-culturalism rather than one of multi-culturalism. he wanted a single world culture that was built on the syncretism of all of the others, and discarded religion as primitive backwardsness. he'd like the idea of jews and christians holding hands, but his messaging was around them renouncing their tribal creeds and joining together in a new culture that belonged to both of them, but was neither of one or of the other. remember: the broad struggle of the time was around abolishing segregation. as a product of his era, he would have seen the idea of multi-culturalism as regressive, and instead argued for deeper integration into a new global culture - but not one based on the neo-liberalism being exported by america, but rather one based on the abolition of scarcity. his preferred new world order was deeply marxist, fully egalitarian - and totally secular.

he sang that woman is the nigger of the world and invited you to confirm as much by observing your own, and he was absolutely fucking right in his analysis, but he did so with the intent of making you angry about it, not with the intent of making you smug about it.

and, this can go on for a while, but there's a kind of easy out.

do you know who actually sounds a whole lot like john lennon and has similar views? the answer is myself......because he's a dramatic and profound influence.