Laurent Guyénot, author of From Yahweh to Zion, discusses his new book The Papal Curse…and its implications for understanding where the world is going and why.

Transcript

Kevin Barrett: Welcome to Truth Jihad Audio Visual. I’m Kevin Barrett doing the audio since 2006 and the visual since a little bit after that, unless you want to count my Hannity interview and stuff like that. Anyway, I’ve been looking for truth, 9/11 and otherwise, for going on 25 years. And one of the more important, noteworthy colleagues in that voyage has been Laurent Guyénot. He’s the author of From Yahweh to Zion, the only book that I was willing to spend a year and a half or so of my life translating, because it’s really important. And a lot of his other work is important too. So without further ado, welcome, Laurent. How are you?

Laurent Guyénot: Thank you, Kevin, for having me. I’m fine, thank you. So, I’ve been joining you in the fight for truth only 10 years, well, about 12 years. So, you know, you’re my teacher in that field, in everything, actually.

Kevin Barrett: Well, thank you. So, we’ve been together about halfway through the period since 9/11 and pretty much on the same page. With the “Israel mainly did it thesis,” which more and more people are starting to wake up to. You’re hearing whispers of that from people with tens of millions of audience members. If you add up Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, and well, there have been a couple of others, I think, too. What’s his name? That famous podcaster guy?

Laurent Guyénot: Nick Fuentes, maybe?

Kevin Barrett: Yeah, him too.

Laurent Guyénot: Actually, him more than Carlson and Candace Owens, about 9/11 at least. It seems to me, from what I’ve looked at, Carson is not really saying Israel did it. He’s just saying they might have had foreknowledge or he’s still at this stage. So that’s why we’re looking forward to the 25th anniversary to see if the Israel did it theory is moving forward. I hope so.

Kevin Barrett: Well, yeah, Carlson is dropping a few nods and winks, I think. He’s just being very, very careful so as not to invite, you know, getting Charlie Kirked or something like that. But yeah, I think you were ahead of your time with that thesis. And the world is catching up to you. And so you have a couple of other very provocative historical theses as well. And that’s what we’re going to actually talk about today. Your book, The Papal Curse, has just come out. And it argues that the papacy, the institution of the Catholic Church, has really been more of a curse than a blessing for Christianity, for Europe, and for the world. Now, my many Catholic friends—and I probably have as many Catholic friends as any kind of group from another philosophy or religion outside of my own Sufi Muslim orientation—I have lots of Catholic friends, and most of them aren’t going to like this. But I think it’s a discussion worth having, and any book that you write is worth talking about. So let’s go for it. Let’s talk about The Papal Curse. So what got you started with this?

Laurent Guyénot: Well, I think my research really, it’s a prolongation, a continuation of my research on Yahwism, you know, on Israel, what is the essence of Israel. And in my In my book already, From Yahweh to Zion, that it translated, I kind of opened up the discussion about the Jewish question being actually the other side of the Christian question. How Jewish power kind of conquered the West. It cannot be explained without understanding Christianity’s relationship to Judaism. That was my starting point. But then having some background in the Middle Ages—

Kevin Barrett: You don’t look that old. (Just kidding.)

Laurent Guyénot: Yeah. Well, you know, my mind, my soul may be quite old. I don’t know.

Kevin Barrett: We’re about the same age, so you’re getting pretty old.

Laurent Guyénot: Yeah. Yeah, so anyway, I, well, actually, I had some kind of, how do you call it, epiphany. One day, it just hit me, the very simple truth that if you try to understand Europe, and that’s another angle, and those two angles kind of met in my mind, because…If you love Europe, you cannot but be struck by the fact that Europe is a disaster as a civilization today because Europe is fragmented. And so therefore, if you try to understand what’s going on in the world today with the multipolar order, with civilizational states or the civilizational area trying to find a new order, you cannot help but be depressed as a European by noticing that Europe simply does not exist politically. There is a kind of European Union government. Everybody in Europe hates them. They have no legitimacy. They have no sovereignty. Every country in Europe still has...

Anyway, the fragmentation of Europe, if you start to think about it—and it’s not natural to think about it because we just assume it’s the normal state of Europe. We just have been told, well, Europe is a Europe of nations. But if you really start to understand how Europe became a Europe of nations, if you’re a Christian, if you’re a Catholic, you will quickly understand that, well, that’s thanks to the Pope. And most Catholics who think the papacy did a good job are happy with Europe being a Europe of nations. They’re just not happy that Europe is not enough for a Europe of nations. And they’re not happy that nations, European nations, have lost their sovereignty. And so they’re kind of in a dilemma because they know, realistically, European nations are not players in the new multiple world. Only Europe has the potential to have a place and to resist colonization from the United States, or in the past from the Soviet Union.

So that’s the tragedy of Europe. And as I studied the Middle Ages, I realized it has been a tragedy throughout the history of Europe, ever since the fall of the Roman Empire. And it has been a tragedy not only for Europe itself, because Europe is in a state of civil war. If you think of Europe as a civilization, it’s a civilization which is destroying itself all the time. It’s a constant state of war, with each nation trying to outdo the others in terms of military technology. And so from many different standpoints, even from the standpoint of the war ideology that developed in Europe and the war technology, the military technology, this was all kind of motivated by the competition between nations, trying to either dominate Europe or at least not be destroyed by their neighbors. I mean, until World War II, that’s what it was.

And then there is this famous book by a German historian (Ernst Nolte) called The European Civil War. He says Europe is in a state of civil war. The First World War and the Second World War were basically European civil wars. Europeans killed each other in atrocious ways. They’ve been killing each other forever.

Kevin Barrett: Some historians say that’s the single biggest reason why Europe conquered the world in modern era of colonialism and imperialism. The two most plausible reasons I’ve heard are that (fragmentation into warring states forcing rapid development of military technology) and the printing press. The printing press made people become more educated and literate, and that enabled them to jump ahead in technology. And then, of course, having them fighting each other all the time led to advances in military technology, which they used to conquer the world.

Laurent Guyénot: Yeah, well, the printing press happened quite late. You know, Europe was in a state of civil war already for many centuries before, so I don’t think that’s a major factor. But yes, you know, so there are two sides to look at it, two ways tolook at it.

Kevin Barrett: Wait! You’re saying Europe was already conquering the world before the printing press?

Laurent Guyénot: No, I’m saying Europe was already in a civil war. .

Kevin Barrett: What I was saying is those are the two reasons given for Europe’s success in conquering and colonizing the world.

Laurent Guyénot: Okay.

Kevin Barrett: And so they’re kind of separate, right? In other words, I wasn’t saying that the printing press happened because of civil war. They (civil war and the printing press) were just two things that happened in Europe that set Europe apart.

Laurent Guyénot: Yeah, well, you know, from the printing press, you can say literacy and the industrial, the scientific revolution and so on. Yeah, of course. But if you look at what happened to China, for example, it didn’t have much to do with the printing press. It had to do with military superiority. Europeans came with their metal ships. They conquered ...