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Amanpour
Interview with "Backtalker" Author, Columbia Law School Professor of Law and UCLA Professor of Law Kimberle Crenshaw; Interview with "This is Also a Love Story" Author and Journalist Sally Hayden; Interview with "The Blind Spot" Author Jeffrey Winters. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired May 29, 2026 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:00:00]
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello, everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KIMBERLE CRENSHAW, AUTHOR, "BACKTALKER" AND PROFESSOR OF LAW, COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL: We are fighting for the soul of a multiracial democracy, and if
they are successful, it will be a long time before we'll see the opportunity to regain everything that we've lost.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Trump's crackdown on diversity, equity, and inclusion with higher education in the crosshairs. Renowned civil rights activist and law
professor Kimberle Crenshaw discusses her new memoir, "Backtalker," about her fight for justice and fairness.
Then --
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SALLY HAYDEN, AUTHOR, "THIS IS ALSO A LOVE STORY" AND JOURNALIST: I see love more than I see cruelty and greed and, you know, exploitation. But
yes, it doesn't always make the news headline.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: -- Lebanon reels from one of the deadliest days since the ceasefire began and ended. Foreign correspondent Sally Hayden has reported
from war zones around the world, and she joins me to share the importance of finding love and hope in the darkness.
Plus, "The Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate our Democracies." Author and political scientist Jeffrey Winters explains to Hari Sreenivasan how
society is built to allow inequality to prevail.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
And we begin with the Trump administration ramping up its crackdown on diversity, equity, and inclusion, DEI. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth
blasted, quote, "the woke military" in his address to West Point graduates, while the Department of Justice is accusing both Yale and UCLA of illegally
considering race in admissions to their medical schools. Many academics say this all goes beyond just admissions and hits right at the heart of who
gets to belong in America.
Our next guest is the renowned civil rights activist and law professor Kimberle Crenshaw. She coined the term intersectionality and helped
spearhead critical race theory. Her new memoir, "Backtalker," traces her own personal journey growing up in Ohio during the Jim Crow era. And she's
joining me now to discuss how she was inspired to speak truth to power and the importance of continuing to do so now.
Kimberle Crenshaw, welcome to our program.
KIMBERLE CRENSHAW, AUTHOR, "BACKTALKER", PROFESSOR OF LAW, COLUMBIA LAW SCHOOL AND PROFESSOR OF LAW, UCLA: So delighted to be here again.
AMANPOUR: Kimberle, can I just start by asking you to respond to what I alluded to, and that is, you know, at a graduation speech at West Point,
there goes the secretary of defense again, you know, cracking down on woke. And as you know, he's cracked down on black recruits and officers, on
female recruits and officers, on and on. And I wonder, when you see that happening in the military, which I was told is one of the most successfully
integrated institutions in all of the United States, what that tells you?
CRENSHAW: Yes. Well, it's shocking, but it shouldn't be a surprise. This administration has made a promise, and they're acting on it. When you say
you want to make America great again, and that moment that you're trying to take us back to was a moment before most of us had rights, before there
were laws against discrimination, really before the military was even fully integrated, then that tells you that the goal that they are pursuing is to
recreate precisely that image, precisely that reality.
So, yes, among the first things that this administration did, this second administration, was take out the highest-ranking African-American military
personnel and women, as well. It has long been seen as, you know, the most important moment in integration, when the armed forces became integrated.
So, yes, they're going to start there, but this is what's more. In their campaign to erase history, in their campaign to censor ideas.
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There was a time, not recent -- not long ago, that they went through the library at one of the military academies, purging books. They took out
books like Maya Angelou, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," but look at what they left on the shelves. They left Adolf Hitler, "Mein Kampf," on the
shelves, and other books like that. So, there is a particular ideology.
It was spoken by one of the administration's officials, who said, if you want to get things done right, you need to put white men in charge. That is
the ideology, and that is what you heard from Hexeff and others, who are basically putting words to the actions that they've already done.
AMANPOUR: Clearly, it is shocking what we're seeing being unraveled and what you just said about choosing even the kind of ideology to allow
military to read. Is it going to be successful, do you think? Do you think these people, these leaders, who want to, as you say, roll back history,
give it back to when white men were supreme in the United States, is there any way they can actually make that work? Because they're rolling back
voters' rights, you've got the gerrymandering, rolling back all sorts of elements of the Civil Rights Act. There's a lot going on in this regard.
CRENSHAW: Well, you know, it really -- the jury is still out on whether they're going to be successful, but one has to say, on their side, there's
historical precedent for the ability of combined forces to actually unravel, dismantle, push back against progress that's been made to make us
a true, inclusive democracy.
This faction is a faction that has a long history in American society. Reconstruction was an eight-year program to actually create a real
democracy. The Redeemers came through and unraveled every last bit of it. And African Americans lived in racial tyranny for another seven decades.
The important thing to recognize is that this campaign that they are prosecuting isn't just about the midterms. It's not just about the next
presidential election. They're playing for keeps. This is about what will happen throughout this century and the next century.
So, we have to understand this isn't something that we can simply try to pivot away from, try to come up with different words, try to appease. We
are fighting for the soul of a multiracial democracy. And if they are successful, it will be a long time before we'll see the opportunity to
regain everything that we've lost.
AMANPOUR: So, yes, let's say that that is their aim. And it's horrifying to hear you say it would last this and the next century. But that was going
to be my next question. Can this be reversed? Can it survive, you know, post-Trump? In other words, the backlash, can it be reversed? And
especially since we know the statistics show that I think by 2030, or maybe it's a little later, America will be a majority-minority nation. So, is
there the numbers and the potential sort of momentum to reverse the reversals?
CRENSHAW: Well, you know, this is precisely, I believe, why they are putting the pedal to the metal right now, because numbers alone do not
guarantee equality, equity, inclusion, and justice. We've known that from the history of the South itself, in which in many states and in many
counties, the majority of voters there were black. That's why there was a need for the Voting Rights Act, because a minority was able to keep a
majority under thumb by utilizing various means to suppress the vote.
And of course, in the international arena, we have South Africa, we have any number of examples that show that simply being a majority doesn't
necessarily translate to political power. If the question is, will they be successful? The reality is that unless we talk back to this, unless we
repudiate authoritarianism in all its forms, and importantly, in the United States, unless we draw a connection between authoritarianism and racial
tyranny, they may well be successful.
That's precisely why we have to resist with everything, including rejecting the idea that what we have inherited is all we deserve, rejecting the idea
that engaging the past is itself illegal, unless we reject the idea that telling the truth is divisive.
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If we give up on all of what made us what we are, and if we're unable to capture the story of transformation and the people who risked everything to
create the Voting Rights Act and to create opportunity, if we give up on that, we will lose the thread and be unable to bend the arc of the universe
towards justice.
AMANPOUR: Now, look, you are not just an activist, you are primarily an academic and a law professor, and you have talked about what you want the
legal framework to understand. Back in 2022, you invoked Toni Morrison's warning about restricting racial histories and silencing experience. You
said, changing the rules about what racial histories can be taught and what experiences can be acknowledged is not a healthy feature of a robust
democracy, it's a symptom of a dying one. That's Toni Morrison, who you invoked.
And your book is called "Backtalker." So, how does that happen? How do you propose backtalking actually achieves, you know, extending that moral arc
towards justice?
CRENSHAW: Yes. Well, you know, Toni Morrison is the writer who keeps giving us gifts, and I write a fair amount about her in my memoir. When I
discovered that essay about racism and fascism and her framing of them as secular twins, it opened up the ability to see what was missing and how
we're thinking about this current moment.
You know, you have your folks who are the pro-democracy folks, and they've been deeply concerned about the unraveling of our democracy. And of course,
you have racial justice folks who are deeply concerned about the unraveling of the commitment to racial inclusion. Well, what we need to do is to
connect those dots. When our democracy was broken before by people who would rather break the nation rather than share it equitably with people
who didn't look like them, when that happened, we all suffered. Of course, some people suffered a whole lot more, but we didn't live in a functioning
democracy.
We're at a point where the same thing is happening again. There are efforts to break our democracy, to unravel basic protections, to render certain
voters unable to elect people of our choice, and to take away the ability to say anything about it. These are all the fundamental aspects of a nation
that is moving into tyranny. We need to be able to connect those dots and to bring communities together to be able to see what is our common interest
in sustaining a democracy that's responsive.
The only way we can do it is for us to tell our truths. The only way we can do it is to refuse to bend the knee. And, unfortunately, too many
institutions who ought to know better are bending the knee. So, that's why it's time to talk back.
AMANPOUR: So, tell me about your reflections, because, as I said, you're very famous for coining the term intersectionality. Right now, there's not
just a racial pushback, but there's a misogyny, there's an anti-feminism pushback, anti-women pushback.
You know, you've said that you can't just talk about one sort of oppressed segment and one minority. It's all are intersectional. Why do you think
there's such a pushback on all of that now?
CRENSHAW: Well, you know, I have a good colleague who always reminds me that when people try to take something away from you, whether it's
something of value, whether it's something material, or whether it's our story, our narrative, our ideas, it's because those have been a vehicle
that move people. We go somewhere when we have the ability to name experiences and to name and understand the contours of our life.
They're trying to take it away because it was useful. They're trying to take away these ideas because people mobilized around them. They're trying
to undermine the legitimacy of talking about structural racism and intersectionality because they saw millions of Americans being mobilized by
these ideas in 2020.
There's always a backlash to forward momentum. That happened, as I mentioned, in reconstruction. It happened in the civil rights moment. It's
happening in this post-George Floyd, post-racial reckoning, post-feminist moment.
And so, I see this, particularly with respect to intersectionality, as the reaction to the fact that groups that come together and understand their
common interests and understand what we need to make a functioning democracy are groups that have to be turned back.
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Lastly here, we're dealing with the consequences of what I call a huge intersectional failure. If we look at how our democracy has been undermined
by money in politics and how our democracy has been undermined by the collapse of the Voting Rights Act, these were Supreme Court decisions that
were narrow decisions, five, four decisions that were made possible by a particular justice that was confirmed because of what I call a huge
intersectional failure. That's Clarence Thomas, who was confirmed when our country was unable to hear, listen, and affirm the story of a black woman.
So, not only is intersectionality important so that black women can be heard, women of color can be heard, intersectionality is important for us
to understand what the interests are of the nation as a whole. And when we failed her, and I could come up with other black women who have been
failed, we have all lost as a nation.
AMANPOUR: You know, I know you're talking about Anita Hill. I know you supported her. You know her well. Legally, you supported her, as well. And
yes, that was a pivotal moment. You know, interestingly, it put a lot of women into Congress in that moment.
But from your memoir, you also talk about how your activism, how your academic studies have been informed by your childhood. You talk about
losing your father, then your brother, you know, growing up in a single- family-headed household. And I was very interested to hear how, you know, you were looked at as a family, you know, with just a mom, because so many
times we hear, oh, yes, well, you know, it's a problem with black families. You know, they're no fathers. They're no -- they're just, you know,
collapse of the family. How did that affect you and then your, you know, your studies?
CRENSHAW: Absolutely. Well, I lived through a period of time where we transitioned from a two-parent, father-headed family to one in which my
mother was raising me on her own. And this happened at precisely the time that the Civil Rights Movement was being undermined by the claim made by
Daniel Patrick Moynihan and others that black folks would never achieve equality as long as our families were non-normative, as long as our gender
relations were upside down and inside out.
And that was framed in terms of black women being too economically independent, black women being too powerful, black women leading families.
Well, I happened to be in one of those families that was led by a single mother after my father died, and I understood that this was a product of a
society in which we lived. It was a product of some of the opportunities that she didn't have.
It was the product of other things that robbed her of some of the advantages that she did have, such as property that was lost through urban
renewal. So, all of the things that were being framed as moral failings or as gender disruptions were actually the combined effect of patriarchy and
also of racism and class inequality.
So, you deal and should deal with the patriarchy, deal with the structural racism, not try to frame the problem in terms of mothers who are working
hard to support their families. The best way to support families and create equality is to create opportunities for those who are leading those
families.
AMANPOUR: And, Kimberle, finally, you see this, as it was coined once, this whitelash going on. And I wonder whether you, if you could do it all
over again and reframe the DEI argument, is there another way to do it to prevent this kind of real weaponization of everything from critical race
theory to everything we've just been talking about? Academically, when you put your thinking cap back on again, would you say that if you had to do it
all over again, you would do it differently?
CRENSHAW: Not at all. Because the issue is not the words. The issue is not the names. Look, would people have done reconstruction over because
reconstruction became a bad word? Do we think that it would have survived? The confederate soldiers and the confederate power structure that wanted to
take the states back and reduce African-Americans back to a position of utter and complete subordination if they had just called it a different
name? Not at all.
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If we had called integration a different name, with all those people who resisted Brown vs. Board of Education, said, oh, why didn't you call it
something different? No, it wouldn't have had that, that would not have been the point.
The point is, whatever we call these things, if they're about changing the equation on the ground, and if they're about creating equality in a system
in which people have been made to think that equality is a zero-sum game, if there's more equality for you, there's less status for me, there's
always going to be resistance. That's what the battle has to be about, not on what it's called.
AMANPOUR: Yes. Well, this one is called "Backtalker." Kimberle Crenshaw, thank you so much indeed.
CRENSHAW: Always a pleasure to be here.
AMANPOUR: Coming up, this is also a love story. Award-winning foreign correspondent turned author Sally Hayden is shining a light on the love,
kindness, and resilience of ordinary people during times of war. My conversation after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: We turn now to Lebanon, which this week experienced one of its deadliest days since the ceasefire began. It seems to have ended on Tuesday
with Israeli airstrikes killing 31 people. That's according to the country's health ministry, which accused the IDF of carrying out, quote, "a
series of massacres" in multiple locations across southern Lebanon.
For years, the award-winning foreign correspondent Sally Hayden has lived and reported from Beirut until she's been up close to the devastation
there. But she's also seen the strength and resilience of the human spirit. In her new book, "This Is Also a Love Story," she focuses on what's too
often left out of war reporting, the kindness and connections between ordinary people. And she joined me here in our London newsroom to discuss
finding love in those dark places.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Sally Hayden, welcome.
SALLY HAYDEN, AUTHOR, "THIS IS ALSO A LOVE STORY": Hi, thanks so much for having me.
AMANPOUR: Your book, it's called "This Is Also a Love Story," and it's a lot of your reportage, but focusing on people, the relationships in all
manner. You have got a chapter on Lebanon, and you profile a man called Bassam.
HAYDEN: Yes.
AMANPOUR: And he had to go to extraordinary measures in a moment of dire economic distress to help his family. Tell me about him, why you chose him.
HAYDEN: So, Lebanon has been through many crises, not just the war that's ongoing at the moment, but also the economic crisis, which has devastated
the country. So, depositors, what happened was, people with savings in the bank, their money got effectively seized. And, you know, people who had
saved up for their whole life were people who had received inheritance or whatever it was and had money in the bank, and Bassam was one of those
people.
His father needed urgent medical care, and he had to pay for it, and he -- you know, this was basically a breaking point for him, and so he decided to
raid a bank and try and get his own money. And he --
AMANPOUR: Literally, he went into a bank to steal his own money back.
HAYDEN: With a gun and a gallon of gasoline, he basically went into this bank and began effectively a hostage situation. And the strange thing was
that -- so, word of this spread very quickly, and actually, people started gathering outside and cheering him on.
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And Bassam -- eventually this situation ended, and he was then hailed as a national hero. So, I met with him, and we spoke about not just what he had
done, but also his relationship with his father, who actually passed away the following year. He talked to me. You know, for me, it was very notable
because afterwards there were further raids by other people who -- a lot of them also had relatives who needed medical care.
AMANPOUR: So, this was desperation?
HAYDEN: And -- but it was also desperation, taking action, trying to reclaim your own agency in this horrible crisis situation. But for me, I
wanted to speak to him about his relationship with his father as well. For me, this was also kind of a love story, as I say in the book.
AMANPOUR: Yes. I mean, "This is Also a Love Story," is your take on war, crisis, disaster, and the people who are caught up in it? Were you
surprised to find that level of humanity there? What were you thinking when you went into a crisis zone and were there to cover war? You're a young
reporter. I mean, you've done a lot. But were you surprised to find that dynamic going on?
HAYDEN: I think, like, you definitely, as a much more experienced reporter, know this. Like, you see love every single day. You see love
everywhere. It's, like -- it's -- you know, almost taken for granted that you will see it and that you will hear people talk about love. Not always,
you know, totally expressed. Like, we're not the best at speaking about love. But people will say, you know, the reason that they take certain
actions or the motivating, yes, motivating factors or you just see it all of the time. But it's not necessarily something we always report on. And
that's for lots of reasons.
And I think that may be, like, partially why I wanted to write the book is to remind people, you know, that actually humans with feelings and, you
know, connections and loves are in the middle of all of these situations. And someone asked me, actually, like, was it hard to find these stories?
And I was like, no. Like, you see them literally every day. Like, I see love more than I see cruelty and greed and, you know, exploitation. But,
yes, it doesn't always make the news headlines.
AMANPOUR: Yes, it doesn't. And it's a very important factor in all of this, in all these dynamics. You used to be an intern, actually, on this
show. And you were there -- I can't remember the exact date, but you were there when we broke the news, along with the Guardian, of the famous Caesar
photograph, the Caesarphile, who was a former security agent in Syria who had blown the whistle and had taken a huge number of, had documented the
evidence of torture at their worst, worst prison.
Do you remember that? Did that spur you on? And how has it sort of affected you since?
HAYDEN: Yes, I remember that very well because it was just so shocking. It was like the, yes, the cruelty that humans can do to each other. But it's
strange thinking back on it because I didn't know that much about Syria at that time. And afterwards, I ended up reporting further on this. And then
when the Assad regime fell in 2024, I actually ended up in Syria right afterwards, going to Sednaya prison with families of the missing who were
searching for their loved ones.
And one chapter in the book, I actually reported most of it before the Assad regime fell, interviewing the relatives of people who were missing
about their quest for justice, some of whom, like, found out from those photos what had happened to their loved ones.
AMANPOUR: You referenced a particular mother, Mariam al-Hallak. Tell us about why you chose her.
HAYDEN: She's an incredibly courageous woman. Her son was killed, and she found out evidence of his killing in the Caesar photos. And she has
dedicated herself to trying to get justice, to trying to get answers, to raising awareness about what happened. She described meeting so many other
mothers who were doing the same search as her.
So, she said that because they were inside Syria, they weren't able to speak out. You know, they weren't able to -- you know, they could ask
certain questions, but they couldn't push it too far because they were also worried about the missing person. Maybe they're still alive. Maybe
something -- they'll be punished, you know, further if they do something.
But she, yes, found out what had happened to her son, that he had been killed and that there was the evidence of that and decided she was going to
dedicate herself to pursuing justice. I met her in Berlin, where she lives now, and she told me both the story, but also about her son, you know, and
about their relationship and her love for him. And, yes, it was, again, very powerful.
AMANPOUR: Yes. So, these fall into -- the stories we've just spoken about fall into the non-romantic category.
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But you went to Iraq, and you profile a really interesting couple, definitely romantic, how they navigated their love, you know, even under
ISIS. Tell me about that. When was it? Who was in charge? Why were they anywhere near ISIS? And how did they navigate?
HAYDEN: Yes. So, I went to Mosul in northern Iraq, and I met a couple called Marwa and Saif. And for that chapter, I was thinking I wanted to
look specifically at marriages and, you know, how they've been impacted or changed by kind of the changing circumstances in the region.
So, when ISIS took over and they occupied Mosul, many people fled, but civilians also stayed because, you know, for a wide range of reasons,
including that they just don't want to leave their houses. They knew that the houses would be seized and could be destroyed or occupied. And also,
like, many told me that they thought that this was temporary, you know, so they really were like, this isn't going to be long-term. We just need to
hunker down and wait until ISIS leave again. And during that period of time, Marwa and Saif fell in love.
So, they used to have secret phone calls on the roofs of their houses late at night. And at the time, you know, using your phone could get you in
trouble because ISIS might think that you were a spy, and the connection only worked on the roof. So, they'd have this very kind of slightly
dangerous or very dangerous calls on the roof to each other. And they said that that was the period that they fell in love, and they ended up getting
married.
AMANPOUR: Again, it's really important to know this because so many of these people who are in all these situations are very, very dehumanized, no
more so, frankly, in my opinion, than in Rwanda during the genocide. And even since, it's been touch and go. What did you discover in Rwanda about
love?
HAYDEN: Yes. So, I went to Rwanda, actually, the first time in 2014, right after I was an intern on your show, actually.
AMANPOUR: And that really inspired you to go all the dangerous places.
HAYDEN: Yes. I went, actually, on a one-way ticket. So, I had a reporting grant, and I was like, I'll just go and stay as long as possible. And it
was during that period that I came across this idea of artificial families. So, what these are is people whose families were killed during the
genocide. They called them genocide orphans, but sometimes they would have one parent still alive. But a lot of their family had been killed.
And they basically formed these families with this organization called ERG. And they appointed a father and a mother, and then the others were
children. So, they were all pretty much the same age, but one person would be the father and the mother, and they'd all meet up once or twice a week
and basically just check in. So, the parents would be like, are you studying? Like, do you have any problems? Have you been good this week? You
know, just keeping an eye on them, but also being a kind of support system.
And it really made me question, you know, what is a family? What does it mean to be part of one, and is there any way that you can kind of replicate
that? Obviously, it's not a replacement, you know, but it's still kind of something that's quite meaningful for a lot of people. And I wanted then,
10 years later, when I was writing the book, I decided I'm going to track down some of these people and see, are they still in these families? You
know, how has it developed? And yes, that was quite --
AMANPOUR: And?
HAYDEN: Well, what they said was that, you know, which -- it's strange because I was the same age as them when I initially met them, so I hadn't
fully realized that, you know, when you get older, you kind of choose your own family as well.
So, many were married, they had their own children, but they still said that these, you know, artificial families played a role in their lives. And
one man, he took out his phone, and he scrolled, he showed me his WhatsApp, and he was like, look, the WhatsApp group is at the very top, you know.
AMANPOUR: Of the artificial -- so-called artificial family?
HAYDEN: Yes.
AMANPOUR: It's amazing. I mean, that's social science you're documenting there, particularly out of such a devastating situation. In Japan,
essentially, you discovered love after death. Tell me about that. What was the profile?
HAYDEN: So, in Japan, I ended up looking into what was called the drifting post. I met a man called Yuji Akagawa, and he basically set up a postbox.
And there was obviously the 2011, like the devastating tsunami and earthquake, and huge numbers of people were killed then. And Yuji set up
this postbox that people could write letters to people who had died, basically as a form of grieving. And he was still running it 10 years
later. And he had said, you know, he thought that the letters were going to stop arriving, but they haven't stopped arriving.
And it's ended up being just a way for kind of communal grief, because one of the things he does is he gathers, you know, if it's a private letter,
he'll keep it in a private place. But if it's a letter that's allowed to be public, he gathers them in binders.
[13:35:00]
And so, you can go in and read other people's letters, kind of to be able to formulate your own --
AMANPOUR: It's like a support group.
HAYDEN: Yes, to be able to formulate your own words. And I don't know if beautiful is the right word in grief, you know, but, like, it really -- it
made me think of the different ways that we can process grief and how we can continue to love someone after we've lost them, and how that love is
still very real, you know?
AMANPOUR: So, finally, I'm going to ask you how you processed and what you got out of all of this, and I'm going to ask you to read a passage that we
and you have chosen. Would you mind reading that?
HAYDEN: I know with confidence now that if you look for goodness, care, or kindness amid any crisis, you will find it. I know that local heroes are
always present, too, even if their good deeds go unseen or unappreciated, and their actions only improve the situation on a micro level as opposed to
transforming it completely.
I gathered this reportage partially as my atonement for more than a decade in the journalistic world, which can strip detail, remove agency, and
flatten emotion in comparison to the real world, which is brimming with all of those things. But I also hope it stands as an entreaty to the reader to
always remember that people exist at the center of geopolitics.
AMANPOUR: Well, it's very powerful, and it's a really, really important reminder. When you see what's going on now, whether it's in Iran, the
Middle East, wherever it is, Lebanon, where you've been living, do you think people do focus on that, on the humanity? Do you hope that this book
helps them move in that direction?
HAYDEN: So, I read the book for a few reasons. One was for myself, honestly, because I was feeling just despair at the cruelty of humans. I
mean, you've seen it through your work, obviously. I think reporting internationally and reporting on crises, you just see so much, like,
horrible things, and horror, and you can really get very down, and yes, you can struggle.
And I think I needed to remind myself that there's kindness and goodness in the world, and by looking for it, I mean, you don't have to look far, you
just have to remind yourself that it exists. But yes, it is also a book about dehumanization. It's a book about the dangers of detachment, and I do
think that that is -- you know, dehumanization is used to enable atrocities, effectively, as a tool, and I think that we are seeing that in
so many situations, and yes, it's always important to remind. It sounds very obvious, but to remind people that there are humans at the center of
geopolitics.
AMANPOUR: It's a very timely reminder. So, Sally Hayden, thank you very much.
HAYDEN: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: We'll be right back after this short break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Fewer than 60,000 people, that's 0.001 percent of the world's population, controls three times as much wealth as the entire bottom half
of humanity. That shocking statistic from the World Inequality Report shows how extreme inequality in our modern world has become.
Political scientist Jeffrey Winters argues that while the wealthy have dominated the masses throughout history, the gulf between oligarchs and the
average citizens today is even greater than during imperial Rome. But he points out one key difference, that today this disparity is often achieved
and maintained through democracy. He joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss this so-called blind spot.
[13:40:00]
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
HARI SREENIVASAN, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Christiane, thanks. Jeffrey Winters, thanks so much for joining us. You've written a new book.
It's called "The Blind Spot: How Oligarchs Dominate Our Democracies." I guess first, what's the blind spot?
JEFFREY WINTERS, AUTHOR, "THE BLIND SPOT": Well, the blind spot is We live in a democracy where we see that democracy works in so many ways. Think of
it as among the non-rich. If you were excluded as women, you struggle and you get in. If you're excluded on the basis of race and ethnicity, there
are so many ways in which democracy works horizontally among us. We assume that because democracy works in those spaces, that it will also work
vertically. That is, with regard to inequality in our societies. And in fact, that's not the case. Our democracies are actually designed not to
work vertically. That was something that goes all the way back to the founding.
And so, the blind spot really is about our collective assumption that we can actually address rising inequality through democracy. And that's an
incredibly hard thing to do. In fact, we're going in the opposite direction, Hari. We're -- strangely enough, over the 250-year course of
American independence, we are vastly more democratic and we are vastly more unequal.
In fact, now, democracies around the world are the most unequal societies ever to have existed in human history. And that's just shocking and it
makes no sense.
SREENIVASAN: Yes. Let's talk a little bit about the structure. I mean, you write that, the rich dominate us, not despite democracy, but through it.
How is the design itself flawed?
WINTERS: Yes, so it's built in. So, think of it like this. First of all, all of us have what might be called participation power. This is the right
to vote, voice, speech. But some of us, and that we distribute that radically equally, one person, one vote.
SREENIVASAN: Sure.
WINTERS: And that's the basis of the legitimacy of democracy itself. And yet, that those are not the only kinds of power that operate in politics.
We also have wealth power. That's the power of oligarchs. And that is not distributed at all equally.
And so, the two systems are actually fused, they're actually woven together. And one of the things that oligarchs who were there before the
rest of us in terms of governing, one of the things they were so worried about, as we came into the democratic era was, if there was power sharing
with the many, basically, the power of the vote and the legislature would be used democratically and legitimately to redistribute wealth. There was a
great panic about that.
And in fact, if we go back to the Convention of 1787, one of the things that the framers were struggling with was a clash at the time between
democratic power, participation, and wealth power. And they tried very hard to build institutions that would meld them together.
SREENIVASAN: You're saying that even the framers in that constitutional convention, were not interested in an actual rule by the will of the
people?
WINTERS: Well, I wouldn't quite frame it that way. Here's the dilemma they faced. On the one hand, they were very committed to consent of the
governed. They were committed to freedom. And -- but they also recognized that there was a wealth pyramid in society, and that they thought that that
wealth pyramid was normal and just. And they tried to say, how is it that we can basically have both at the same time? Consent of the governed,
democracy, responsiveness, and yet safeguards that are built in.
So, they ran actually to Philadelphia in the middle of a crisis in the 1780s. It was an economic crisis after the war. And it was a debt crisis. A
lot of us don't remember that the first prisons in the United States were debtors prisons. So, if you were in debt, and there was a lot of debt at
the time to try to pay for the war, people were being thrown into debtors prisons. And the response in the states was to give relief to the average
farmer. And the creditors, oligarchs at the time were getting a haircut.
[13:45:00]
Part of the reason they actually gathered in Philadelphia was to say that that injustice of what the many were doing to the few had to be limited.
So, when they gathered, people like Hamilton, Madison, and a number of others all said, the first problem we need to deal with is there is an
excess of democracy in the United States, we have to limit it. And what did they do? They said, the people get to vote on the House, the Senate, we
didn't get to vote on. And it was its job was to block the house in case any kind of threat to policies came up.
SREENIVASAN: Yes.
WINTERS: And then they gave a veto power to the president in case those two institutions down below failed. And then, finally, they built five
people in a Supreme Court who would be able to block the entire democratic process.
So, that -- is their democracy? Yes. But we have to understand it as being with limits. So, I call it in the book participatory inequality is what we
end up with.
SREENIVASAN: OK. What about the idea that, listen, this one person, one vote is only as good as the people who actually show up? What
responsibility does low voter turnout have when it comes to either your local school board election or the presidential?
WINTERS: So, participation is so incredibly important. There's no doubt about it. If people are going to be able to affect the kind of policies in
their favor that help them, they've got to show up. Actually, oligarchic power is very different. Wealth power is set in motion. It sets in motion
others, what I call a wealth defense industry.
So, actually, oligarchs can golf and do other kinds of things, and their wealth power is still working in their favor. We all know that we get to
vote on Election Day. And then prior to that, we have an opportunity to vote in the primaries. Prior to that is what might be called the wealth
primary, which is two years before any voter ever gets involved. And that's when candidates who want to be viable put themselves in front of oligarchs
to try to get money so that they can go forward. In essence, oligarchic power is filtering the choices we later get to have.
SREENIVASAN: So, here, you know, you could see hyper capitalists say, this is just name calling. This is what the market set up. I and other people
have won. We have done the best. We've innovated the best products. We've made the best widget, so to speak. And that's why we're wealthy. What's
wrong with that?
WINTERS: Yes. So, one of the things we have to do is separate just pure wealth from the political influence that wealth buys. And so, Americans are
actually quite tolerant of great inequalities in society. When Bernie Sanders runs around and does his fight oligarchy rallies and so on, and he
stands in front of the audience and he says, you know, we have millionaires and billionaires who are, you know, wealth inequality, the audience doesn't
go very crazy.
When he says that wealth is being used to distort democracy, that's when people's legitimacy gets offended. They don't like the idea that wealth is
turned into power, which is turned into outcomes that benefit, tilt the system in favor of the few. And so, that really explains how it is that we
can be tolerant of difference.
Somebody's got a yacht. Somebody's got a robot. That doesn't necessarily offend everyone. But if you start taking the fundamental principle of one
person, one vote and start saying, well, thanks to Citizens United, which has really thrown open the floodgates, we now have people who have the
equivalent of millions of votes, what it amounts to in terms of their power and their influence.
That is why we're now talking about oligarchs, not in the Russian oligarch sense, but in the American oligarch sense. And we haven't talked like this
since the Gilded Age, since the Robber Baron age. And that's because, although oligarchs have been there all the way along, the visibility of
oligarchs today is so different that it's impossible for the average American to say, well, are we in a democracy or are we in an oligarchy
today?
SREENIVASAN: We had this Corporate Transparency Act that was supposed to be the -- you know, a bipartisan measure that increased our ability to see
who's funding what. You would describe that as kind of an anti-oligarchy piece of legislation, right? What happened to it?
[13:50:00]
WINTERS: So, the Corporate Transparency Act, one of the things that works in favor of oligarchs is that unlike you and me, all of our money on a W-2,
on our wages is completely transparent to the IRS. But when money is made from money through shell corporations, and trusts, and foundations, and
placed in secrecy jurisdictions, it's not transparent.
So, in Delaware, Wyoming, Nevada, and a number of other states, you can set up a shell corporation where what is called the beneficial ownership of it
is not known. So, you can't tax that which you can't see. And so, one of the things the wealth defense industry in the United States does, lawyers,
accountants, wealth management professionals, is make oligarchs help them avoid paying taxes.
And so, the Corporate Transparency Act was put, was passed in the National Defense Authorization Bill, and it basically said there's going to be a
registry where we're going to know every corporation and who owns it. That got blocked in March of 2025. And it was an incredible victory to sort of
reduce secrecy and transparency toward oligarchs, and it's been reversed.
There's something called the tax gap, OK. This is the amount every year that the IRS is required to calculate, and it's the difference between what
the IRS expects it ought to be able to bring in, given all its data and all of its records, and what it actually brings in. That number, that gap, is
now $1 trillion a year.
Remember that our national defense budget is $900 billion. So, this is more than our entire defense budget. It's a massive number. And who's not
paying? Well, it turns out that the average citizen, where the government knows every penny you've made, they basically cheat at about a 1 percent
level. Oligarchs cheat at a 55 percent level. What they're doing is they're holding on to their money, and they're making money on that money.
SREENIVASAN: All right. So, let's talk about some of those changes. What would you propose?
WINTERS: First of all, I would go back to what you mentioned earlier. Something as fundamental as the Corporate Transparency Act. It's already
the law, but the Treasury Department has decided to exempt 99.9 percent of all firms from the law. That was just an executive decision. That is
something that could be reversed. We don't have to repass the law. That's one.
There's another very simple policy called the Enablers Act. It was blocked by one senator a few years ago. It had bipartisan support. What is the
Enablers Act? We all know that banks are required to know their customer. This is because of terrorism and everything else. They wanted to be able to
track the flow of money.
So, oligarchs and others began to avoid banks, and they went through wealth management professionals, family offices, and all kinds of things.
Basically, that law requires the same kind of reporting of suspicious activity.
Let me turn to something a bit more deep-cutting. Wealth taxes. Here's what's interesting about wealth taxes. What is the number one store of
wealth for the average household? And the answer is their home. And it turns out all of us are already paying a wealth tax every year on our
homes. And it's adjusted whether we sell the home or not. That's how vicious the system is. It is putting a wealth tax on all of us at the
average level. And including sometimes someone -- you know, granny has lived in a house for 50 years, paid it off, has to sell it because the
property taxes on the house keep going up.
Meanwhile, the main store of wealth for oligarchs is not their home, not their property, but their stock and their financial assets and so on. When
you're taxed on your home, you're taxed not only on your equity, the part of it you actually own, you're taxed on the mortgage as well. So, we are
taxing our debt. That is an example of how the system is slanted in favor of the very wealthy and against the average citizen.
SREENIVASAN: Jeffrey Winters, thanks so much for your time.
WINTERS: It's been a pleasure. Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And finally, remember a jazz legend. This week, Sonny Rollins died at the age of 95, leaving behind an incredible legacy. The saxophonist
was known for embracing unique, bold and experimental sounds, earning him the title the greatest improviser in the history of jazz.
[13:55:00]
During his more than 50-year career, Rollins released over 60 albums, and his widespread popularity even led to the company Pioneer Electronics,
booking Rollins for this iconic commercial from the 1970s.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Night after night, he stood alone on the Brooklyn Bridge and practiced. For months, he blew his music to the stars. And when
he felt the time was right, Sonny Rollins came back to his public.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So, poignant. And Sonny Rollins was awarded the 2010 National Medal of Arts by President Obama, who said that he had been inspired by the
musician to, quote, "take risks that I might not otherwise have taken." What great advice.
That's it for now. If you ever miss our show, you can find the latest episode shortly after it airs on our podcast. And remember, you can always
catch us online, on our website, and all-over social media. Thank you for watching, and goodbye from London.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:00:00]
END
