• Multi-millionaire filmmaker and author
• Views America as a deeply racist nation with a violent, gun-crazed culture
• Called the U.S. "a nation that was founded on genocide and then built on the backs of slaves"
• Believes that capitalism is "an evil system"
• Characterized American troops in Iraq as "the occupation," and the Iraqi insurgents who killed American troops as freedom-fighting "Minutemen" who inevitably would emerge victorious 

Michael Moore is a multi-millionaire filmmaker and author of several books. He was born on April 23, 1954 in Davison, Michigan, a white, middle-class suburb ten miles east of Flint.

After eighth grade Moore enrolled in a Catholic seminary. "He admired the Berrigan brothers [radical anti-Vietnam War Catholic priests Daniel Berrigan and Philip Berrigan] and thought that the priesthood was the way to effect social change," wrote The New Yorker's Larissa MacFarquhar in February 2004. "This resolve lasted only through his first year, though, after the Detroit Tigers made it to the World Series for the first time in Moore's life and the seminary wouldn't allow him to watch the games."

At age 18, Moore ran for his local city school board on a simple platform: "Fire the Principal." He won, becoming America's youngest elected city official.

Moore thereafter began studies at the University of Michigan but soon dropped out. He became a local hippie and hosted a Sunday morning radio show called "Radio Free Flint," where he developed a reputation for staging whatever stunts and protests would attract media attention.

In 1976 Moore created a small leftist newspaper, the Flint Voice (later called the Michigan Voice), which he edited for ten years. This position gave him access to leftwing activists and fundraisers, and the opportunity to do occasional commentaries for the National Public Radio feature "All Things Considered."

In 1986 Moore was hired as editor of the San Francisco-based socialist magazine Mother Jones. But his authoritarian arrogance quickly alienated most staff members, and within four months he was fired. Moore responded by suing Mother Jones for $2 million. He eventually pocketed $58,000 from the magazine's tax-exempt Foundation for National Progress; this became seed money for the production of his first film, Roger & Me, an assault on General Motors, its chief executive Roger Smith, and its recent worker layoffs in Flint. With assistance from movie critic Roger Ebert, Moore sold his documentary to Warner Brothers in 1989 for $3 million.

In 1995 Moore released Canadian Bacon, his only non-documentary production (aside from his music videos for groups such as Rage Against the Machine and R.E.M.). Its fictional plot centers on a President of the United States who boosts his popularity by engineering a war with Canada.

Moore also directed and hosted his own television show TV Nation, which aired in 1994 and 1995 before being cancelled due to its small audience.

In 2002 Moore's anti-gun documentary Bowling for Columbine reached theaters. His depiction of America as a violent, gun-crazed culture was honored at the Cannes Film Festival in France and won the 2003 Academy Award for Documentary Feature. When it was later revealed that the film was replete with staged, concocted, or deceptively edited content, Moore defended his falsehoods by claiming that he was a mere entertainer. When Lou Dobbs of Cable News Network (CNN) pressed Moore about his inaccuracies, Moore dismissed Dobbs' questions, saying: "You know, look, this is a book of political humor. ... How can there be inaccuracy in comedy?" To deflect another questioner, Moore declared that Roger & Me was not a documentary but "an entertaining movie, like Sophie's Choice."

In 2004 Moore released a broadside attack against President George W. Bush, Fahrenheit 9/11, which won the highest award at the Cannes Film Festival. It was later shown, however, that this film too was rife with lies and distortions.

One of Moore's most strongly held convictions is that, as he declared on the CNN program Crossfire in 2002, "Capitalism is a sin. This is an evil system." In his 2003 book Dude, Where's My Country? Moore wrote: "Horatio Alger must die! We're addicted to this happy myth … that anyone can make it in America, and make it big. … Listen, friends, you have to face the truth: You are never going to be rich. … The system is rigged in favor of the few, and your name is not among them, not now and not ever."

Moore himself is one of these ultra-wealthy few, with a net worth exceeding $50 million. On November 1, 2005, World Net Daily reported that the anti-capitalist Moore -- who had proudly declared "I don't own a single share of stock!" -- in fact owned tens of thousands of shares in U.S. stocks. Most notably, Moore owned more than 2,000 shares in Halliburton -- the gas and oil company he excoriated in his film Fahrenheit 9/11.

Moore is a frequent speaker on college campuses, which pay dearly for his celebrity presence and speeches. The Federal Election Commission launched an investigation into Moore's 2004 "Slacker Uprising Tour" of dozens of colleges and universities, most in swing states, during the closing days of that year's presidential campaign. The filmmaker, who exhorted young voters to support Democratic candidate John Kerry over Republican incumbent George W. Bush, charged the schools or student organizations up to $30,000 per appearance. "The slacker motto," Moore told one cheering crowd of college students, "is 'Sleep till noon, drink beer, vote Kerry November 2.'" He added, "'Pick nose, pick butt, pick Kerry," and ended with an echo of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels from the Communist Manifesto: "Slackers of the world, unite!"

Moore dedicated his 2003 book Dude, Where's My Country? to the late Rachel Corrie, an International Solidarity Movement activist who had been accidentally killed by an Israeli bulldozer she was attempting to impede as it destroyed tunnels used by Palestinian terrorists to smuggle weapons. "In their hearts [Israelis] know they are wrong," wrote Moore "and they know they would be doing just what the Palestinians are doing if the sandal were on the other foot."

Moore has been honored by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee and Muslim American Public Affairs Council. An affiliate of the Iran-linked terrorist group Hezbollah offered to help promote his film Fahrenheit 9/11 in the Middle East, especially after Moore had tried to prevent the movie from being shown in Israel.

Vis a vis the Iraq War, Moore's affections are clearly offered to America's adversaries: "The Iraqis who have risen up against the occupation [i.e., against American, British and other coalition forces] are not 'insurgents' or 'terrorists' or 'The Enemy," said Moore. "They are the REVOLUTION, the Minutemen, and their numbers will grow -- and they will win."

Reciprocating Moore's support for anti-American and anti-Western terrorists, the Indonesian man convicted of the Bali terror bombings of 2002 had his lawyer read to the court excerpts of Moore's Stupid White Men as justification for his hatred of the West.

In 2008 Moore referred to the United States as "a nation that was founded on genocide and then built on the backs of slaves."

In November 2008, Moore was interviewed on CNN's Larry King Live. On the subject of the financially struggling U.S. automobile industry, Moore said:

"… [W]e've allowed a few people at the top to get filthy rich…. The Ford chairman is making something like $22 million a year and his company lost $2 billion last year. The G.M. chairman is making $15 million a year. His company lost $39 billion last year. And he's rewarded with a $15 million payout. I mean this is -- this is just absolutely insane. But I'll tell you what it really has proven to me, Larry, is that these guys, after all of that stuff they've been telling us all these years about go capitalism, free market, free enterprise, they don't believe in any of that. They don't believe in free enterprise or a free market. They want -- they want socialism for themselves. They want a handout and a net for themselves. To hell with everybody else, but give it to them. And I think, really, what we're seeing here right now with them, with the banks, we're seeing the end of capitalism -- the end of capitalism as we know it. And I say good riddance. It hasn't helped the people or the planet."

In May 2009, upon learning that General Motors had declared bankruptcy and would be nationalized by Barack Obama and the federal government, Moore wrote the following:

"... So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with -- dare I say it -- joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with....

"But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company!... If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we've allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?...

"Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices....

"The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call 'cars' may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet....

"President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately. Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce -- and most of those who have been laid off -- employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation....

"Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now....

"To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them."