Documentary film maker Michael Moore blasted the capitalist economic system – the one that reportedly made him $50 million – and called for the arrests of Wall Street bankers in an interview with Piers Morgan this evening.
Morgan showed a video of Moore earlier in the evening, protesting on Wall Street, saying that capitalism “is about the upper one percent owning the majority of this country and everyone else scrambling for the crumbs . . . It’s not democratic.” During the Morgan segment, Moore said that the wealthy on Wall Street are “getting away with a huge crime” because “no one has been arrested” from Wall Street banks “for the crash of 2008.”
Moore said that the Wall Street protests are about asking “are we going to live in a democracy that’s run by a majority of people or are we going to live in a kleptocracy?” He then compared the Wall Street protesters to civil rights era protesters before saying that “this won’t take that long. This wont take a hundred years for people to respond, because Wall Street has overplayed its hand.”
The dialogue about Wall Street protests led Morgan and Moore to discuss the riots in the United Kingdom, which Moore accounted for with this comment:
Moore did note that he does not endorse the violence indulged in the riots.
Morgan asked Moore about his opposition to capitalism, especially given Moore’s financial success as a filmmaker. When asked if his movie-making amounted to a capitalist endeavor, Moore replied “Is it really?” He then noted that “the only reason I do well is because people want to see my movies,” before indicting the modern financial system as a corruption of capitalism, a “shell game.”
As Moore concluded his remarks on capitalism, he said that “it’s not American.” Additionally, he said “it’s not Christian or Jewish,” after citing 46 million poor people that Moore believes the capitalist economic system neglects. “None of the major religions, in fact they all,” Moore said, “say it’s one of the worst sins you could commit, is to take such a large piece of the pie while others suffer.”
You can see Moore talking about capitalism below. You can see more of the interview here.
