About the Podcast, Faction: Infiltrating Hate
These are episodes, produced in serial form, of my recorded conversations with Cole Tyler, an FBI undercover agent inside a dangerous hate group.
While real figures and actual events are referenced in this podcast and provide backstory, the specific characters, situations, and incidents presented are fiction, products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to real people is coincidental.
My first contact with Cole Tyler was in May of 2025. I was at home, in my office working on a piece, not coincidentally, about a white supremacist group west of Richmond. My phone buzzed. A new text, number unknown. Normally, I wouldn’t allow it to distract me, but I happened to catch my name in the text so I stopped and read it:
I’m a freelance investigative journalist who writes about white supremacists, Neo-Nazis, and other hate groups. I can’t ignore a text like that, so I paused a moment…well, a few moments….and then liked it.
I already had the encryption app, Signal, on my phone, along with Wire, Telegram, Discord, and all the other apps hate groups use to keep anyone from listening in on conversations. So, I waited. My heart started beating a little faster. I had this strange feeling it had to do with the piece I’d written a few months earlier for the Washington Post. That article turned my life upside down.
The newly inaugurated Klein administration, not two weeks into his term, quietly made cuts to the FBI’s DT, or domestic terrorism, budget. The same budget that funds undercover work on all hate groups. It was important, because President Klein, who, when he was candidate Klein, refused to disavow hate groups and had a way of cozying up to to anything he could find that was racist, sexist, anti-LGBTQ, or xenophobic.
The piece blew up. More than I’d wanted. Then Klein was forced to answer a question about it in a press conference, which made it go viral. I got death threats. I did interviews. I slogged through all of it, but it comes with the territory.
It wasn’t long before I got the call from this mysterious person who needed to talk, and when I answered it, my life changed.
This is where the podcast picks up. I’ll let you listen (links below or find anywhere), but, just so you know, I’m going to use this Substack as a way to fill in the gaps, so feel free to follow along here:
If you’re interested in contacting me, I’d be happy to reply: info@factionreport.com or on social → Ethan Fox.
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Listen on Apple Podcasts (or find Faction wherever you get your podcasts):