July 6, 2012: Conservative Editor Claims Drone Spied on Him, ‘Patriots’ ‘Will Be Hunted Down Like Dogs’ if Obama Re-Elected

Joseph Farah claims his house was “buzzed” by a spy drone similar to this US Predator drone flown in Afghanistan. It is not clear if the drone Farah claims to have seen was armed with wing-mounted missiles, as this one is. [Source: Slow33 (.com)]WorldNetDaily editor Joseph Farah claims that a “spy drone” buzzed his home, and says he fears the Obama administration intends to have him and other conservative journalists murdered. The “spy drone” “surveillance” is, Farah claims, part of a larger “war” being waged by the Obama administration against its political enemies. Farah makes the claim in an interview published on the Web site InfoWars (.com). Farah tells InfoWars reporter Paul Joseph Watson, “I’m taking my dog for a walk and guess what I see right over the tree line right above my head is a drone.” He says the drone was low in the sky and sounded like a lawnmower. Farah says that the object he saw could only have been a drone, and could only have been spying on him. “I don’t live in the city, I don’t live in a populated area, I live in one of the most rural places you could possibly live in Northern Virginia and there could only be one thing that this drone was spying on and that would be me, that would be my property because there’s just nothing else around except woods and deer.” Farah jokes to Watson that the drone was stalking him because he is a terrorist, referring to recent findings by the Department of Homeland Security that some far-right political figures are aligned with right-wing domestic terrorists. “The liberty lovers out there really have to stick together,” he says, “or we’re going to hang together as our founders said.” As reported by Watson, Farah adds that “patriots” who “resist the increasing levels of control being asserted over their lives by big government would be ‘hunted down’ by a re-elected Obama administration.” Farah says, “Look—this is the first term—if he’s re-elected it’s going to be war—they will be at war—we will be hunted down like dogs, keep that in mind, that’s what the stakes are.” Farah says he was also persecuted by Clinton administration officials. Watson notes that drones are being used by police departments and federal authorities in the US, and claims that drones are being used to spy on farmers. [InfoWars (.com), 7/6/2012] Farah’s comments are ignored by the mainstream media, but get a significant amount of attention online after the right-wing news aggregator Drudge Report links to it. Some progressive sites and conservative watchdogs call attention to Farah’s claims, portraying them as ridiculous and/or paranoid. [Think Progress, 7/6/2012; RT.com, 7/6/2012; Southern Poverty Law Center, 7/9/2012; Atlantic Monthly, 7/10/2012]