Martin Kettle Joins the Other Horsemen of the Anti-Apocalypse: Anders Puck Neilson, Vlad Vexler, and John R. Raymond
- john raymond
- Jun 26
- 3 min read
There are voices that soothe. And there are voices that warn.
In an age of collapsing illusions and authoritarian resurgence, we need the latter more than ever. Which is why it matters that Martin Kettle, in his June 26th Guardian column, has now joined a growing alliance of clear-eyed analysts—those of us who refuse to flatter power or confuse appeasement with strategy.
With his piercing critique of the NATO summit and its sycophantic posture toward Donald Trump, Kettle becomes the fourth Horseman of the Anti-Apocalypse.
I do not call ourselves this to dramatize, but to clarify: in a world rushing toward manufactured catastrophe—whether through war, disinformation, or the authoritarian degradation of meaning—there are still thinkers holding the line. Thinkers who understand that the danger is not just chaos, but the calculated abuse of chaos by men who want to rule over the ruins.
Kettle, like Anders Puck Neilson, Vlad Vexler, and myself, sees that appeasing Trump does not tame him. It empowers him.
Kettle’s Contribution: The Collapse of Dignity
In his piece, Kettle writes plainly:
“Without dignity, leaders fell at Trump’s feet… and for what? All NATO’s key problems remain.”
That line alone captures the heart of the matter. The Hague summit—rather than reinforcing collective security or confronting Trump’s openly transactional sabotage of NATO—became a theater of submission. Rutte texted Trump praises. Leaders danced around confrontation. Flattery was dressed up as diplomacy. And none of it worked.
As Kettle points out, the real issues—Ukraine, defense credibility, European autonomy—were ignored. Instead of facing Trump’s true position as a destabilizing actor within the alliance, leaders acted as if appeasement would bring resolution. It didn’t. It never has.
The Other Horsemen: Strength in Clarity
This is where Kettle joins a lineage:
Anders Puck Neilson, the first to sound the alarm that warfighting in the 21st century would be hybrid, information-based, and far more asymmetric than Western planners were prepared for.
Vlad Vexler, whose philosophical clarity on Trump’s narcissistic distortion of democracy offers a critical lens for understanding the decline of institutional trust.
And myself, who has argued—loudly and repeatedly—that Trump is not rogue but subordinate to Putin, and that flattery is not how he is controlled but how he controls others.
Each of us approaches from different disciplines—military, philosophical, strategic—but we converge on one thing: truth must be told, even when it triggers. And appeasement is not strategy. It’s submission.
The Anti-Apocalypse Defined
Why “anti-apocalypse”? Because we do not seek collapse. We seek resistance to the engineered collapse that authoritarians feed upon. We call out the bad logic before it becomes bad policy. We name betrayal while others call it diplomacy. We treat figures like Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, and their imitators not as outliers—but as predictable outcomes of regime-security politics in a decaying liberal order.
Martin Kettle’s column is a sharp, necessary addition to this body of thought. It doesn’t hedge. It doesn’t flatter. It tells the truth: Trump was not managed at The Hague. He was indulged. And every leader who flattered him did so at the expense of democratic strength.
I know I welcome Kettle to the ranks. The Four Horsemen of the Anti-Apocalypse now ride together—not to end the world, but to keep it from ending itself.
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