This began on progressive blogs in 2003-2005 timeframe. It got much worse from there, but that’s where it all started. Most people situate this quite incorrectly in time and origin because they were not there.

If you showed up and earnestly asked questions to attempt to learn more, well, that was very bad. You were accused of JAQing off, derailing the conversation, were obviously a terrible progressive if you didn’t already know this stuff, and then you were ridiculed and dismissed. It was even worse if you disagreed in any way. Then they would say you were “literally Hitler” and you’d be immediately banned.

This stunning dismissal of curiosity and allowance of any differing views then managed to metastasize to the entire culture. So now we’re here. But it all began on blogs like Pandagon, Shakesville, and the broader feminist/progressive blogosphere of that era. Those sites did not invent that brand of moralized contempt, of course, but they did mainstream it. They were the leaders of treating any disagreement as malicious, taking any confusion as bad faith, seeing all questions as sabotage, treating curious outsiders as interlopers, and accepting the already-converted as the only legitimate audience.

And from that inauspicious beginning, much that was terrible resulted.