A good argument can be made that it comes from the machinations of Bell Labs (AT&T) and their promotion of C (and later C++). Debatably, a concerted effort was

A good argument can be made that it comes from the machinations of Bell Labs (AT&T) and their promotion of C (and later C++). Debatably, a concerted effort was made to attack and belittle Pascal in the media, to get it out of the way. Many people seem to refer to Pascal with a very odd hostility or unknowingly regurgitate talking points originating from Bell Labs, and as if the language froze in time and stayed the same as it was in the 1970s.