Nikola Tesla: why was he so much resisted and forgotten?

The amount of published material about Tesla is enormous (thus, he is less forgotten than I thought). The number, importance, and transcendence of his inventions and doings are overwhelming, yet current recognition does not seem to abound, although during his lifetime he did indeed receive many honors. Why then this state of oblivion? What happened? Can history be so blatantly distorted? Were Marconi and other well-known and reputed men so cynical as to purposefully commit acts of intellectual piracy, as claimed by Seifer in his biography of Tesla? An attempt is made to answer these questions.