It seems overly broad, but written in a really snarly way. I think the main popularity of this is how easy it is to apply to anyone who disagree with - just match the overly broad descriptors with your opponents (it will fit on almost any populist movement - i.e. any group that has protests) and you just need to snarl and line up why they fit the prerogative descriptions of populist movements.
Let's just look at the first bit:
> The first feature of Ur-Fascism is the cult of tradition.
Notice how snarly "cult" is. If you think people who eat pineapple on pizza are wrong (and a bit crazy) it's a "cult".
> Traditionalism is of course much older
than fascism. Not only was it typical of counter-revolutionary Catholic thought after the French
revolution, but it was born in the late Hellenistic era, as a reaction to classical Greek rationalism.
In the Mediterranean basin, people of different religions (most of them indulgently accepted by
the Roman Pantheon) started dreaming of a revelation received at the dawn of human history.
This revelation, according to the traditionalist mystique, had remained for a long time concealed
under the veil of forgotten languages — in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in the Celtic runes, in the scrolls
of the little known religions of Asia.
So we've already admitted that "cult of tradition" is pretty meaningless, every group will have someone who traces elements of their "traditions" back to a previous group.
> This new culture had to be syncretistic. Syncretism is not only, as the dictionary says, “the
combination of different forms of belief or practice”; such a combination must tolerate contradictions. Each of the original messages contains a silver of wisdom, and whenever they seem to
say different or incompatible things it is only because all are alluding, allegorically, to the same
primeval truth.
But surely EVERY group has syncretic traditions. This is almost like saying "Fascists drink milk, not just milk but milk from mammals". I suppose you could argue that fascists drink milk (and combine elements from a variety of traditions) in an obnoxious, stupid and irrational way, so why not just say the three big warning signs of fascism are that they're obnoxious, stupid, and irrational?
> As a consequence, there can be no advancement of learning. Truth has been already spelled
out once and for all, and we can only keep interpreting its obscure message.
You'd be hard pressed to find a bigger syncretistic traditionalist than Isaac Newton. You'd also be hard pressed to find someone who create a more important advancement in learning.
> One has only to look at the syllabus of every fascist movement to find the major traditionalist
thinkers. The Nazi gnosis was nourished by traditionalist, syncretistic, occult elements. The most
influential theoretical source of the theories of the new Italian right, Julius Evola, merged the Holy
Grail with The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, alchemy with the Holy Roman and Germanic Empire.
The very fact that the Italian right, in order to show its open-mindedness, recently broadened its
syllabus to include works by De Maistre, Guenon, and Gramsci, is a blatant proof of syncretism.
If you browse in the shelves that, in American bookstores, are labeled as New Age, you can
find there even Saint Augustine who, as far as I know, was not a fascist. But combining Saint
Augustine and Stonehenge — that is a symptom of Ur-Fascism.
We've now gone from "talks about traditional" to outright occultism.
I think it's probably better to chalk this up to the totalising nature of fascism (as well as other totalising political movements like Marxism, and maybe even religious-political movements).
It's not the tradition (and certainly not the syncretism) that really matters here, what I think is a warning sign would be the totalising nature of fascism (and other dangerous movements) as it seeks to establish control over all aspects of life.