Probably, bitcoin becomes much stronger after having had identified these falsehoods and pointing them out and then also being on guard against future simlarly-situated baloney ruses
I've said this in a few threads that claimed that the 'war is over' since Classic is pretty much gone, this is not the end and this will not stop. Your next controversial HF might be just around the corner.
Sure, it is like we cannot rest assured about anything for certain to put this XT/Classic matter or other contentious fork matter to rest, and so likely we will always have to remain vigilant to point out the bullshit... because there are a lot of vested interests out there who also may persuade and mislead.. when they are inclined towards undermining bitcoin.
So, in that regard, maybe a lot of us have learned from this experience that persons who appear to be credible and making genuine claims to make proposed technical changes for the "good of bitcoin" are in fact making proposals that will undermine bitcoin in various ways.... getting down to the governance issue and surely a controversial hardfork is one of those categories that was framed as benevolent... with considerable downsides that were framed as upsides... using terms, such as efficiency, growth, make money to draw in mass adoption, etc... but these were not really true assertions even when some folks may have jumped on the XT/classic train and genuinely believed it.
Also, yeah, there are going to continue to be new people in this space, who evolve to become "people of importance" in the bitcoin space, even though today they do not even know about bitcoin, and one way that these new influential bitcoin people do not undermine bitcoin is when longer time bitcoin activists/stakeholders remain aware, vigilant and involved and to do some of the hard work of paying attention to overall vision matters and to details to recognize especially when some folks seems to be asserting to make changes to bitcoin just for the sake of change by showing some of the alt coins as example.. or trying to convince that bitcoin is broken without really showing evidence or logic..
So i guess my long winded response is merely agreeing with you regarding the hardfork issue not going away.