But all these features were also true for the dictatorships toppled say in the Arab Spring. Or Franco. People were not expected to be engaging in politics, support was not manufactured etc. Still there was unrest and instability.

The claim is that it is more pleasant to live under a monarchy or rightist dictatorship, where you're at least allowed to keep to yourself.

One, students, intellectuals who care about things like freedom of speech: basically, with some cynicism you could see it they want a piece from the power cake. Perhaps a system that would offer them clear paths to power could defuse it, but being rebellious still feels more virtuous and empowering than repeating official propaganda for a chance of promotion and a sinecure so the only system I can imagine that could secure their support would be itself pretending to be perpetual rebels: welcome to the "Cathedral".

Yes, the neoreactionary claim is that in that kind of intelligentsia environment people win based on their ability to signal piety (or virture) eventually the memes will evolve for maximal apparent piety. This is bad (or very bad) because at some point signaling piety becomes orthogonal to actually being good ideas. You wind up converging on ideas that super-stipulate human inbuilt values. When the pious ideas prove impractical this get's blamed on not everyone being sufficiently pious, thus the least pious must be purged.

One of the weirdest and most scary facts of early 20th century Europe is that students were above-average likely to participate in proto-fascist movements.

Scarier then the large participation of students in proto-communist and actual communist movements?

Around the world, youth radicalism was visible in 1908, visible in 1848 and so on.

Jim's proposed solution to this problem is based on restoration England:

1) Require an oath of loyalty to the official religion to serve in government and especial teach at colleges, so you don't get radical professors radicalizing students.

2) If possible make the official religion as boring as possible, so smart people are encouraged to focus their energies on productive tasks, like business or science, rather then attempting to create ever more pious versions of the official religion.

Come on. Spending money on making a candidate or party attractive and advertised buys votes. Not literally but in the sense of increases the chance of people voting for them.

The studies I've seen suggest that once you've spent enough money so that the average voter knows how the candidate is, you hit diminishing returns fairly quickly, at least from regular advertising. Of course, if you are friends with the editor and can have him put a favorable spin on the actual reporting, that's different. And it also relies on connections, not money.