It’s like, at first, it was relatively apolitical except maybe the New Atheists who got popular by criticizing the mostly right-wing religious nutjobs.
But then, I think around the mid-2010s, it started to get super political. Suddenly, everybody started to talk about how the evil wacky feminazi SJWs were trying to destroy gaming and our culture?
At this point, it seems like many people have snapped out of it and are making fun of these “anti-woke” crazies, but what materially caused this phenomenon to happen in the first place and why does it still persist to an extent?
Subcultures are always more extreme expressions of an aspect/aspects of their supercultures.
Internet and geek cultures both, in the Anglosphere, have always been proponents of American Exceptionalism and Liberal Exceptionalism. And both of those things have progressed to fascism.