I suspect that at least some of this phenomenon is due to the emergence and success of the two great and successful “absurd” breakthroughs of physics that turned our view of reality on its head in the last century.
Relativity and quantum mechanics are both exceedingly strange and yet are absolutely valid. Their acceptance and widespread promulgation “gave license to” absurdist pseudo-intellectuals in other fields, from psychology and religion (think dyanetics and scientology) to ethics (think Peter Singer) to social science (think Cloward-Piven).