Blood Work

A History of Violence w/ Patrick Wyman

Prompted by a meditation on mercenaries, Gregk consults the henchest man in ancient history to discuss ancient forms of violence work and whether our current conjuncture is really a rupture, or more a return to form.Follow Patrick Wyman on BlueskyListen to Past LivesListen to Tides of HistoryBlood Work is a Scam Goldin ProductionThis episode was produced by Thomas O’MahonyOur theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis TronOur artwork is provided courtesy of KT KobelIf you enjoyed this episode:– Support Blood Work via Patreon– Leave a rating or review on your podcast app– Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter
Image: A group of unidentified mercenaries operating in Gaza, 2025.
THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: WEST MIAMI ANTISOCIAL CLUBALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIO
For this week’s newsletter, we situate the United States’ latest wave of aggression against Cuba within the longer histories of the the twentieth and nineteenth centuries, stripping back the various narratives the western hemisphere’s imperial master has layered, like wallpaper, over its designs on Cuba over decades.

Combat 18, Part 2: We Need Some More Lads in Here w/ Gareth Watkins [PREVIEW]

This is a preview. To hear the entire episode and help Blood Work to survive and thrive, become a supporter on Patreon.
Gareth and Gregk reconvene to tell the second chapter in the C18 saga which, naturally, features some sunlit uplands, a Swedish man named ‘Pie’, and a wizard.
Follow Gareth Watkins on Bluesky
Read his recent article, “Has Ukip Gone Full Nazi?” in The New StatesmanRead his excellent essay, “AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism” in New SocialistListen to the Death // Sentence podcast
Image: A title card from a C18 propaganda video tape, sourced from the third World in Action documentary about the group.
Blood Work is a Scam Goldin ProductionThis episode was produced by Thomas O’MahonyOur theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis TronOur artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel
 
For more:
– Support Blood Work via Patreon
– Follow us on Bluesky / Instagram / Twitter
THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE: SURGES, EMISSIONS, FLOWSALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIOFollowing a few weeks in which the news has focused heavily on events which continue to unfold in Minneapolis and the broader United States, this week we’re shifting the focus to West Africa and the Middle East, to two conflict zones which still swirl and churn amidst the fallout of the 2011 Arab Spring, and the long first two decades of the twenty-first century.

Combat 18, Part 1: Lad’s Army w/ Gareth Watkins

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 StatesmanRead his excellent essay, “AI: The New Aesthetics of Fascism” in New SocialistListen to the Death // Sentence podcast
Blood Work is a Scam Goldin ProductionThis episode was produced by Thomas O’MahonyOur theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis TronOur artwork is provided courtesy of KT KobelIf 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 AFKALSO AVAILABLE IN AUDIOThis 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

Cruel to be Kind: Sanctions [PREVIEW]

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 ProductionThis episode was produced by Thomas O’MahonyOur theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis TronOur 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)

Reign of Terror w/ Spencer Ackerman

Gregk speaks to the award-winning national security journalist Spencer Ackerman about the long shadows of 9/11 and the War on Terror, how America’s response to those events contributed to its current condition, the media’s role in justifying and legitimating state violence, and much more.Spencer Ackerman is a national security journalist whose work has appeared in The Guardian, The Daily Beast, Wired, The Nation, Zeteo and many other publications, and whose career has spanned almost the entirety of the Global War on Terror. In 2014, he shared the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for his work at The Guardian on Edward Snowden’s disclosures surrounding the NSA’s global surveillance programme. In 2021, he published Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump. He also recently wrote a ten-issue run on IRON MAN for Marvel Comics, currently available in two trade paperbacks. His latest book is The Torture and Deliverance of Majid Khan: A Father, A Son and the War on Terror, forthcoming from Penguin.
Spencer is also the founder and proprietor of FOREVER WARS, an ongoing chronicle, investigation and interrogation of the continuities, departures and permutations of the War on Terror
If you enjoyed this episode:
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– Leave a rating or review on your podcast app
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Blood Work is a Scam Goldin ProductionThis episode was produced by Thomas O’MahonyOur theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis TronOur artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel
THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE – DEI-Codi
For this week’s newsletter, Gregk shares some of his thoughts on the extra-judicial killing of Renee Good by an ICE officer in Minneapolis, Minnesota on January 7, 2026, and reflects on the homologies between the Trump administration’s paramilitaries and the death squads that operated in Central and South America during the latter half of the twentieth century – in many cases backed, trained and coordinated by the United States.
Image: U.S. Military Police guard detainees within Camp X-Ray at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 2002. (Shane T. McCoy/U.S. Navy/Getty Images) 

COIN All the Way Down: A Discourse on Counterinsurgency [PREVIEW]

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 ProductionThis episode was produced by Thomas O’MahonyOur theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis TronOur 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)
 

Chestnuts Listening on a Blood Work Fire w/ Thomas O’Mahony

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:
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– Leave a rating or review on your podcast app
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Blood Work is a Scam Goldin ProductionThis episode was produced by Thomas O’MahonyOur theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis TronOur 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

"What Does The Forest Say?” w/ Dr. Florin Poenaru

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 ProductionThis episode was produced by Thomas O’MahonyOur theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis TronOur 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.

Down Below the Borderline: The Monroe Doctrine

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 ProductionThis episode was produced by Thomas O’MahonyOur theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis TronOur 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 Kiss Horses, Don’t They? / Four Fascist Concepts

What are ‘libidinal politics’? What the fuck is a ‘machinic assemblage’? Why are these men all terrified of women? This week, we explore four key ideas in the fascist imaginary and head down to the stables to look at some freaks.
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 ProductionThis episode was produced by Thomas O’MahonyOur theme song is ‘Dream Weapon’ by Genghis TronOur artwork is provided courtesy of KT Kobel
THIS WEEK IN VIOLENCE – Hit & Run
This week, I take a look at some articles about drone warfare in Ukraine, Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza, and the transfer of those tactics to the US’ steady approach to War on Venezuela, and meditate on what these might portend about the new rules of engagement for warfare in the 2020s. Plus: Some further thoughts on a man and his horse, childhood romance, and the death of intimacy.
Available now for Patreon supporters.
Sources:
Walter Benjamin (1999), ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ [1935], Illuminations
Richard Evans (2003), The Coming of the Third Reich
Richard Evans (2005), The Third Reich in Power
Roger Griffin (1991), The Nature of Fascism
Mark Neocleous (1997), Fascism
Klaus Theweleit (1987 [1977]), Male Fantasies, Volume 1: Women, Floods, Bodies, History
Image: German Freikorps soldiers standing by an armored car during the German Revolution, January 1919.