A New York economics professor says that “white supremacy” and capitalism go hand in hand in a recent video interview in which he claims that the system creates the supposed reality that white men are “terrified” of minorities and women succeeding.

Richard Wolff is a visiting professor at the notoriously left-leaning New School in New York City. He is known for promoting Marxism through his controversial economic and societal analysis, in which he blames the system of capitalism for many of America’s problems.

“The white people in America having been given this peculiar privilege, had of course in the back of their mind a guilt"

In a recent video interview, Wolff claims that the system of American capitalism only functions at the expense of minorities and women and that the “systemic” exploitation of these individuals is the means by which capitalism survives. He also claims that the system lends itself to “white supremacy” within individual supporters of capitalism, whom he says reconcile the system’s flaws by blaming its failings on minorities and women.

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On camera, Wolff asserts that since African Americans and women are the “first fired” and the “last hired” during an economic downturn, “white supremacy” takes hold of “the rest of society,” which he says is led to believe that economic struggles experienced by women and minorities are the result of “something intrinsic to an African-American or a female, etc.” when, he claims, it is an inherent flaw in the system of capitalism that “somebody in capitalism has to be kicked out of the labor force every four to seven years.”

Wolff argues that if everybody experienced the struggles of the economic cycle equally, that white men would be more likely to recognize that capitalism itself is the problem.

“If you did it to everybody, then everybody would have a shared interest in changing the system so that we don’t have this kind of absurd instability,” says Wolff. “Instead, we give the permanent job, the job least likely to be bounced out when we have these downturns to the white men, and they get that kind of privilege. They’ve always had that.”

Wolff goes on to explain that the instability of capitalism is cast onto “the secondary people, the repressed people,” and that the system itself only works “by blaming the instability not on the system that’s causing it but on the individuals,” in what he calls a “wonderful example of blaming the victim.”

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The interviewer then relates Wolff’s analysis to Fox News' reaction to Obama’s presidency, mocking individuals on the network for their concern about the increase in welfare recipients at the time, and adding “I’m guessing probably more often than not they’d show pictures of black people.”

To that, Wolff replies with “absolutely.”

The professor goes on to assert that the “full horror” of capitalism is that “the white supremacy we see now” was “really stoked” when Obama became president because white men in America were “terrified” of the groups they had oppressed through the means of capitalism rising up against them.

“The white people in America having been given this peculiar privilege, had of course in the back of their mind a guilt,” Wolff said. “You don’t have to be a psychologist to see it.”

“They kind of know even without admitting it that they’re in this privileged position, and so they have the behavior that’s typical of guilty people.” He goes on to insist that white men have a “fear” of minorities and women becoming president because they would potentially “be the victims of the people that they’ve been victimizing.”

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Wolff says that white men “know very well in some sense what they’ve been getting all along,” and since there is “no one to help them understand” that economic cycles are not the fault of minorities and women, “they can’t think about a system that wouldn’t require this kind of suffering of anybody.”

“They can only think of who’s in the better position,” he says of white men who he believes think of a black or female president as “the worst thing [they] can imagine.”

Wolff concluded his interview with a grim warning that the “convergence of an unstable economic system that has kept itself going by setting people against each other, this is coming to a head in our society” and that “we’re in for quite a stormy time.”

Wolff has made headlines recently for advocating for the abolition of grades at “all levels” of education because they are “capitalism in action” that promote the supposedly dangerous ideals of “meritocracy.” In 2018, he publicly blamed capitalism for the rise in U.S. homelessness.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @celinedryan