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The ultras provide some readymade solutions to such frustration: they argue strongly that the real root of the nation's problem is not Communism abroad, but Communist subversion threatening the U.S. at home. Appealing to the American penchant for action, they urge citizens to fight this subversion by keeping a close eye on their fellow citizens, scrutinizing voting records, writing letters and generally raising a hue and cry across the land. If they cannot fight the Communists in Cuba or Laos, at least they can fight the ones they think they see around them. "Don't worry about the atomic bombs or H-bombs," says former FBI Counterspy Matthew Cvetic, a longtime speaker on the anti-Communist circuit. "It's right here we'll lose the fight."
The rightists rally citizens to their banner in many cases by stressing a belief in nondenominational Christianity as part of their platform. "This war we're in," says South Carolina's Senator Strom Thur mond, "is basically a fight between the believers in a Supreme Being and the atheists." Thus, the rightists' two principal poles of attraction, anti-Communism and religion, are impeccable—and subject to a good deal of emotionalism. But the ultras do not stop there.
What distinguishes them from respectable conservatives, who are enjoying a resurgence of their own? To the ultras, the fear of Communism at home is so great that they often discount the threat of Russian arms to a ridiculous extent: some still insist that the Russians have not developed an H-bomb. In everything that he finds displeasing in modern society and political life, the ultra sees evidence of Communist plots and subversion. With a dogmatic either-or attitude, he broaches no disagreement. "You're either for us or against us," says James E. Gibson, senior vice president of California's Leach Corp., which makes electronic components. "There's no room in the middle any more." And the ultra, dissatisfied with the current political order, usually works outside normal political channels and, indeed, frequently accuses both of the two major U.S. political parties of being prone to Communist influence.
Thus, even such respectable conservatives as Arizona's Republican Senator Barry Goldwater have found themselves under attack from the way-right; others, like National Review Editor William Buckley Jr. and Connecticut's Democratic Senator Thomas Dodd, seem to the ultras to be far too restrained in their attack on the enemy. In a recent Phoenix city election. Senator Goldwater was criticized for being "uninformed about Communism" by a rightist mayoralty candidate, who ran up 13,019 votes v. his opponent's 32,880.