Blood Work

Gareth and Gregk discuss what happens when a group of football hooligans decide to elevate their violent bloodlust into a fully-fledged political movement. (Spoiler: Bad, stupid things.) Follow Gareth Watkins on Bluesky Read his recent article, “Has Ukip Gone Full Nazi?” in The New Statesman Read his excellent essay, “AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism” in New Socialist Listen to the Death // Sentence podcast Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Our artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel If you enjoyed this episode: – Support Blood Work via Patreon – Leave a rating or review on your podcast app – Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: OLD WORLD BRB, NEW WORLD AFK ALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO This week, we took a look at Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s recent address at Davos in which he declared the end of the ‘rules-based international order’ (while conceding this had always been US hegemony draped in a convenient fiction) plus recent developments regarding Trump’s grotesque Board of Peace foundation, and provide some thoughts on where we now stand, how we got there, and who walked us there, step by step. Sources: Nick Lowles (2014 [2001]), White Riot: The Violent Story of Combat 18

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon. We situate the favourite tool in the U.S. arsenal in its historical context, and try to make sense of that silent, peaceful, deadly weapon. Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Our artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel For more: – Support Blood Work via Patreon – Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE – Witness, No Witnesses This week, we look at two news stories which demonstrate the differing approaches to advancing right-wing politics in the US and UK. The rise of Donald Trump and his dominance of political discourse over the past decade has placed spectacle front-and-centre in our understanding of right-wing thought and, indeed, placed right-wing thought front-and-centre in our perception of dominant political ideology. But as our second news story hopefully demonstrates, the brazenness of Trump’s particular political style at times serves to aid the advancement of right-wing cruelty and sadism elsewhere, when a comparative lack of ripples across the water creates the illusion that less is occurring beneath the surface. Now available in audio Image: An Iraqi mother nurses her sick child at a hospital in Baghdad in 1994. (Robert Nickelsberg/Getty Images)

Spencer Ackerman, a Pulitzer Prize-winning national security journalist and author of *Reign of Terror*, delves into the lasting impacts of 9/11 on American society. He discusses how the War on Terror replaced civic solidarity with violence and shaped political landscapes. Ackerman critiques the media's role in normalizing state-sanctioned violence and traces the troubling legacy of institutions like ICE. He also touches on his work in comics to explore these themes and previews his forthcoming book on Majid Khan's harrowing experience in black sites.

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon. We look at the history and philosophy of a doctrine so broad and plastic that even its theorists concede it might not mean anything at all—because if it doesn’t mean anything, then maybe it means everything. Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Our artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel For more: – Support Blood Work via Patreon – Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter   THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE – FLORIDA RASHOMON   A few days ago, the United States knocked over Nicolás Maduro, Head of State of Venezuela, in arguably the most brazen U.S. regime change operations in the Western Hemisphere since the arrest of Manuel Noriega on the very same day in 1990. Everyone in the Trump administration agrees it was an act of bold, decisive leadership from America’s Commander-in-Chief – and yet no one can agree why it was done. This week’s newsletter takes a look at some of the competing justifications for the action from the mouths of America’s best and brightest. Image: American soldiers and Vietnamese civilians walking through the streets of Huế in Central Vietnam (Getty Images)  

For their first ever Christmas episode, Gregk and producer Thomas get together for a casual fireside chat, discussing some of the key questions animating Blood Work, reflecting on the project’s progress so far, where they’d like to take it next year, and offer some perspectives on how this thing that we call violence connects to that other thing that we call politics. And then, as a little Christmas Treat, Gregk tells Thomas about the history of one of the worst hangovers of ‘90s counter-consumer culture jamming, and how it’s connected to some of the worst people in US culture today. New Yorkers, you knew it was bad, but if only you knew how bad it really is. If you enjoyed this episode: – Support Blood Work via Patreon – Leave a rating or review on your podcast app – Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Our artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel   THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE – AUMF LAMF The US’ Authorisation for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) 2001 is an authorisation so broad and loosely defined that it renders the problem of the square peg and the round hole moot; the hole’s aperture can always be widened, and virtually any peg can be hammered through. This week, I’ve picked three articles which demonstrate how its passage inaugurated a permanent, global State of Exception for US warmaking, how recklessly this aperture has been exploited, and how dangerous that is for global governance. Available now, exclusive to Patreon supporters. Image: Cover artwork from the 1985 The Christmas issue of An Phoblacht/Republican News. Source: The Irish Republican Digital Archive

This week, Gregk speaks to Anthropologist Florin Poenaru about his essay for North South Notes, published on the one-year anniversary of Romania’s cancelled Presidential elections, in which ‘outsider’ candidate Călin Georgescu was alleged to have benefitted from a Russian-coordinated TikTok interference campaign. In their conversation, they discuss the layers of power within a globalised political order, the capacity of intelligence services to produce as well as gather knowledge, and the question of where power resides in a country where politics, media, business and academia are constantly imbricated by a large and unruly security apparatus.   Read Florin’s article, ‘The Forest’ in North South Notes. Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Our artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel If you enjoyed this episode: – Support Blood Work via Patreon – Leave a rating or review on your podcast app – Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter   THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE – FAFO-FI-FUM This week, I share three pieces on wars old, new and prospective which reflect the festering wounds of America’s most recent imperial project; the licking of wounds and casting around for a space in which to reassert itself; and the early nicks and scratches we’re already seeing as both the war machine and US consent manufacturing apparatus (brrrrrrr) leap a little too enthusiastically on the latest champion of peace, liberty and justice only to learn that she… well, just might not actually be very ‘bout it ‘bout it. Available now, exclusive to Patreon supporters. Image: A satellite shot of the Romanian Foreign Intelligence Service (Serviciul de Informații Externe/SIE), situated within the Băneasa Forest in northern Bucharest.

In 1823, US President James Monroe declared an end to European colonial ambitions in the Americas. By the end of that century, his declaration had morphed into a license for the United States to pursue unilateral political, economic and military actions across the Western Hemisphere. This week, we examine the history of the Monroe Doctrine and the wider geospatial order of the Americas, and see how, even two centuries later, Latin America continues to tremble in the shadow of that fateful doctrine. If you enjoyed this episode: – Support Blood Work via Patreon – Leave a rating or review on your podcast app – Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production This episode was produced by Thomas O’Mahony Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Our artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE – The ‘Whatever’ Doctrine This week, I share an excellent 2022 essay by Nathan DuFord which builds on the closing themes of last week’s episode on the fascist imaginary; my thoughts on a rancid essay about Venezuela by ice-chewing ghoul Elliot Abrams; and some thoughts on the ongoing criminality of US murder strikes in the Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea courtesy of Demented Donny and Pete ‘Drinks His Coffee on the Rocks’ Hegseth. It’s all so lazy and stupid – but after twenty years of the GWoT, it’s not like we should expect anything better. Available now for Patreon supporters. Sources: Manuel de Campo (2019) ‘Splitting the world in two: the 525th anniversary of the Treaty of Tordesillas’, available at Languages across Borders: Language Collections at the University of Cambridge Citations Needed Podcast (2021), ‘Episode 139 — Of Meat and Men: How Beef Became Synonymous with Settler-Colonial Domination’, available at Citations Needed (Transcript available at Medium) John Gast (1872), ‘American Progress’ [Painting], available at The Library of Congress Greg Grandin (2006), Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, The United States, and the Making of an Imperial Republic Greg Grandin (2019), The End of the Myth: From the Frontier to the Border Wall in the Mind of America George C. Herring (2008), From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776 CLR James (1938), The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution Stephen Kinzer (2013), The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and their Secret World War Lester D. Langley (2002), The Banana Wars: United States Intervention in the Caribbean, 1898–1934 Randall Lesaffer (2015), ‘The Congress of Vienna (1814–1815)’, available at Oxford Public International Law James Martell (2017), The Misinterpellated Subject James Monroe (1823), ‘December 2, 1823: Seventh Annual Message (Monroe Doctrine)’, available at The Miller Center, University of Virginia ‘National Security of the United States of America’ (November 2025), available at The White House James Polk (1845), ‘December 2, 1845: First Annual Message’, available at The Miller Center, University of Virginia Theodore Roosevelt (1904), ‘Theodore Roosevelt's Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine (1905)’, available at The US National Archives Treaty of Ghent (1814), available at The US National Archives Giles Tremlett (2020), ‘Operation Condor: the cold war conspiracy that terrorised South America’, available at The Guardian Sylvia Wynter (2003), ‘Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation--An Argument’, CR: The New Centennial Review (Vol. 3:3) Image: An official from the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita) inspects bunches of bananas in preparation for export from Honduras. (AP Photo)

They unpack four core ideas in the fascist imaginary and trace how ressentiment and stab‑in‑the‑back myths fuel political violence. They explore palingenetic rebirth, the fusion of tradition and futurism, and the aesthetic spectacle of mobilization. They dive into misogynistic fantasies, eroticized violence around soldiers and horses, and echoes of these patterns in contemporary manosphere figures.

In 1971, a group of people cast aside by the state rose up and attempted to reclaim their humanity and political subjectivity. This week, we look at the Attica Prison Uprising to see what that event might tell us about the relationship between politics, law and violence. If you enjoyed this episode: – Support Blood Work via Patreon – Leave a rating or review on your podcast app – Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter – Blood Work is a Scam Goldin Production THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE – Ground Zero The first in a weekly series of posts where I share recent articles that have caught my attention and some brief commentary, along with some broader musings on the nature of violence.  Available now for Patreon supporters. Our theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis Tron Artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel Sources: ‘15 Practical Proposals of Attica Prisoners’ (1971), People’s Law Office The Attica Liberation Faction Manifesto of Demands and Anti-Depression Platform (1971), Freedom Archives Traci Curry & Stanley Nelson (Dir., 2021), Attica Fred Ferretti (Sept. 13, 1971), ‘Attica Prisoners Win 28 Demands, but Still Resist’, New York Times Brad Lichtenstein (Dir., 2001), Ghosts of Attica Charlotte Rosen (May 26, 2025), ‘How Should We Remember Attica?’, The Nation Wendy Sawyer, ‘How much do incarcerated people earn in each state?’ (2017), Prison Policy Initiative Heather Ann Thompson (2021), Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy Image: Participants in the Attica Prison Uprising raise their fists during a negotiating session on Friday, September 10, 1971 (AP)

Come join us, won’t you, for a deep dive into one of the twentieth century’s biggest assholes. Say hello to Carl Schmitt: Jurist, legal scholar, political philosopher… Nazi? Look: We’re only showing you him so you know how to get away from him. Support the show on Patreon You have been listening to Blood Work A Scam Goldin Production Follow us on Bluesky, @bloodwork.show On Instagram, @bloodworkshow and on Twitter @bloodworkshow Our theme song is Dream Weapon by Genghis Tron Artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel Sources: Gopal Balakrishan – The Enemy: An Intellectual Portrait of Carl Schmitt Angus Brown – ‘The Left Should Have Nothing to Do with Carl Schmitt’, Jacobin Stuart Elden – ‘Reading Schmitt Geopolitically: Nomos, territory and Großraum’, Radical Philosophy Carl Schmitt – Dictatorship Carl Schmitt – The Concept of the Political Carl Schmitt – The Nomos of the Earth in the International Law of Jus Publicum Europaeum Carl Schmitt – Political Theology   (Image: Carl Schmitt’s grave in Plettenberg, Germany. The Greek inscription reads, “KAI NOMON EGNŌ” / “And I Know the Law”) If you want to get in touch, email us at contact@bloodwork.show Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time