Just for some balance, the Hong Kong Agreement (which is absent from the article) is really important in this timeline - in Feb 2016, an agreement was reached with miners and signed by a few Core devs (however, possibly under duress?) to work on Segwit _and_ a safe hard fork.

The NYA happening with a few CEOs "behind closed doors", was pretty much a result of the year and a half of no progress on the safe hard fork part. Also remember the miners aren't really a fan of cheap transactions, which eats into their profits, and does fundamentally alter their ROI.

Segwit2X was originally sold as a compromise. Activate SegWit for the future since it requires software updates as you noted for the additional transaction formats, and schedule a 2X HF to help the network grow immediately.

> The big-blocker anti-segwit movement stalled work for years, politicized the Bitcoin space, and contributed to making many of the core devs be the target of harassment

I agree sadly, but unfortunately it was the same story on the reverse side. Look at the ridicule and scorn Mike Hearn and Gavin got for their big block proposals in 2015.