Michael Jackson; Symbol of Dividing the Proletariat

[William Prest]

I have been a fan of Michael Jackson for decades and have watched this super star of musical and dance entertainment rise to the heights and then cast down due to hear-say charges and xenophobia. On June 25th, 2009, Michael Jackson was found dead in his home just hours before the King of Pop was to perform in a concert in Los Angles under circumstances that many see as suspicious. The media loudly proclaimed death as a result of an overdose of prescription painkillers. Some people speculate that he was murdered by poisoning. His doctor has been called up for questioning regarding the whole incident. Michael Jackson is a megastar around the world, except in racist and capitalist USA. Rio de Janeiro is erecting a statue in his honor in contradistinction. At home in the US, Michael Jackson has suffered only derision and slurs because of his alleged pederasty. Over the decades he was taken to court twice on such charges, the second incident alone placed health endangering stress on him. As solid evidence was lacking, he was acquitted, but the reputation stuck due to a negative media blitz. From then on the bourgeois media had a field day calling him weird, "Jacko" and the like. In any article referring to him, he was called Jacko or Jacko the Wacko and the like, despite his huge talents as a singer, dancer and actor.

The American bourgeois state and the wealth generated on the backs of historical slaves and the white proletariat has always relied on two tactics; the ignorance enforced on the working class and dividing the masses against one another along various differences. The American imperialist empire was first built by the crushing the First Nations in a genocidal pogrom that continues to this day. Competing interests historically vied for “virgin land” in order to expand wealth and territory. This meant that they had to remove societies that were in the way. As mechanical power was not fully developed or extensive, they imported slaves to do all the dangerous, dirty and hard labor to build the infrastructure of European civilization in the “new world”. Slaves have always been viewed as inferior and thus treated with less respect than draft animals.

This brings us to the point of Michael Jackson's weirdness. The natural world abounds with "weirdness" (read difference) and this is not met with prejudice, but with awe. When it comes to people and customs, expect difference. One might well say that the dress code of the Ubangi is weird, or that of the Dogons, or cross dressing in our own land. But the bourgeoisie relies on racist tactics and difference to keep the masses warring on each other instead of the real enemy; their common oppressor in the form of the capitalist parasite class. Michael Jackson just happened to be a high profile example. If he was murdered as stated by some, he is not the first in high profile black people. Consider what happened to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, both murdered in cold blood by the imperialist bourgeois.

Part of Michael Jackson's "weirdness" is based on all his cosmetic surgery and skin whitening. But this was done in a culture that for reasons of profit worships and sells a youth culture to the point that people will not be hired unless they are young in appearance and white. Even though Michael Jackson did not "want to be a color" he was still judged as a colored person; receiving the worst that xenophobic attitude could muster. Another point of "weirdness" is his apparent obsession with children and hence the handle by which the xenophobes and fundamentalist Christian mindset could mount their attacks, which were carried over from Michael Jackson and onto the gay population at large. Michael Jackson built at his own expense, a place called Neverland where he would have children visit at the consent of their parents. Two of these parents decided that Michael Jackson would be a good cash cow based on allegations of homosexual child molestation. Unfortunately, the background information on these folks is not readily available other than the fact that both cases were eventually thrown out of court. But the damage done by the hearsay was permanent and all Michael Jackson's idiosyncrasies were magnified all out of proportion and resulted in alienating Michael Jackson right out of the country. Even his family got behind the attacks, which they now regret. Michael Jackson never had a real childhood of his own, being pressed into the entertainment world at an early age as the youngest of the Jackson Five at the tender age of ten.

Attacks on Michael Jackson's character have been constant to the point of driving him from the land where he was born and raised to foreign shores where he was still virtually worshipped as the super star he really was. After successfully driving him off-shore, the media dropped him and Michael Jackson virtually disappeared in North America, but not in the rest of the world that did not fall for the hype.

Eventually, what Michael Jackson will have accomplished, that was acknowledged by the likes of Sigmund Freud, is the acknowledgement of child sexuality. Under the Puritanical code of the American bourgeoisie, this is a smack in the face and they have done everything to vilify and torment people engaged in various consensual relations. As a matter of fact, most (some 60 %) child to adult sexuality occurs within family units and relations. This even goes on in the animal kingdom. At one time, gay relationships were under attack and still are under fundamentalist mindsets. Another persecuted minority is the Muslim. Lately we have been hearing about the horrors perpetrated by the El Shira sect. We have our own El Shira law too! This is worst expressed in the form or the torment heaped upon minorities such as gay people, Muslims and blacks by fundamentalist bigots, which includes beating people until they are crippled or dead from torture.

See the article in the Workers' Vanguard "the Man in the Mirror" for further insight.