The blaming of cliques of scientists for rejecting alternate ideas was cliche and kind of a red flag.

That does happen, of course. Science is conservative because if we have a theory that is a good fit to the data it should take a lot of evidence to unseat that theory and the new one must also fit all the data the old one did. (Unless some data was wrong, but that also takes evidence.)

But this is also something every crank says, and loudly. The more obsessed and loud someone is with a conspiracy against them the more they sound like a crank.

Was Einstein or quantum theory instantly rejected and held down forever by a conspiracy? Not really. There were skeptics but I seem to recall these ideas taking hold pretty fast because they fit a lot of anomalous data very well.