Where did these conspiracy nuts come from? Well, it was people who did not believe what the powers to be were saying. If you look at archaeology showing things like Ellora Caves in India. Which they claim they were done with hammer and chisel but, we could not do it to-day. They are now blocking them off to stop people from looking at some parts this, only starts suspicion. Looking at Auschwitz and other prison camps that x amount of people of a certain religion died, yet the farmer’s almanac only show a little more than one million less people from before the war and after. Yet, if you question you can be thrown in prison. If you look into JFK, 911, the story is the same. The story that they [powers to be] are telling you is not true. If you do research and find anything that disagree with them, you are listed as a conspiracy theorist and a nut. We know that the government has lied to the people many times to get what they want. So trust in what they are saying gets weaker every day, this starts even more distrust. The biggest trap used against conspiracy analysts are telling us how it happened they try to explain and caught in the trap of being discredited. Instead they need to say, it is your story and it is not true, tell us how you did it. When you try to discredit everything the government has ever said or done, you will be caught up and be proven to be a nut job.
Although the term was used prior to the JFK assassination, its modern use as a form of ridicule began there and is today nearly always used as a way of negating anyone who does not accept the official government story. There is surely an agenda to its use.