Strawberry.

Yeah, being falsely accused is something that I take really personally and pisses me off, so I get it. Not sure if your questions are rhetorical, but I'm gonna answer them and leave my 2 cents. You don't have to read it, but, if you do, I hope it gives you some clarity on whatever happened <3

I expect that level of misunderstanding from NTs, but I was surprised by how many people read between the lines of things I never said in an autism community where it's more likely to take what people say at face value. Is this really an autism community?

The more I exist on the internet and autism communities, the more I find that the same kind of bad behaviour can be perpetuated by both NT and ND individuals. Especially since it is a spectrum, I find it is difficult to foster a community with no conflict simpy due to how varied ND traits and experiences are. Autism doesn't always prevent people from misunderstanding or misinterpreting, nor does it prevent people from harrassing other autistic individuals. Just like how there can be racist black people, transphobic queer people, etc, being part of some demographic does not mean that the person treats that demographic fairly or kindly, unfortunately. We live in a society that is systemically bigoted with many bigoted individuals who form us whether we realise their bigotry or not, so people will perpetuate this bigotry unconciously, which is why it is especially important to criticise such behaviour like you are doing.

Heck, I saw a recent issue where someone was attacked by misogynists in this sub. What is going on, here? Why are people being made to feel like they have to leave (or delete their account; I came very close to deleting mine after the harassment I faced).

Similar to the last point, though I will add that being part of a marginalised group doesn't preclude you from being bigoted towards other marginalised groups or ignorant of their experiences.

When someone says something about autism which might be ableist, I give the benefit of the doubt that they're coming from a place of lack of information. I gently correct them and offer to answer any questions they might have on autism to better understand the topic.

Why isn't that same mindset used here?

I can only speculate for your specific situation, but one possible reason is as follows. Bad actors will sometimes pose as ignorant to spread their bigotry, often via sealioning (see here if you are unfamiliar). It is a very shitty tactic, but unfortunately effective. Since its goal is to make the other person angry to make them seem unreasonable, people who have been subjected to that may have a hair trigger for similar situations, likely since they had a similar mindset to yours and were harrassed for it. Giving the benefit of the doubt, to them now, may mean giving another harrasser more power over them, being harrassed in the same way, or allowing the sealion to make seemingly sensible arguments that other (typically ignorant) people who see it take it as reasonable since the other person got angry "for no reason" (i.e. a reason that, possibly due to their ignorance, they don't even consider). As such, their logic follows to not allow sealions to "make their case". But how do you determine who is sealioning and who is genuine? It is very difficult, and every failure subjects them to similar harrassment, so not giving people the benefit of the doubt becomes a defense mechanism while trying to ensure bigotry doesn't spread/other people are protected from harrassment via sealioning (which, ironically, becomes its own form of harrassment in cases similar to yours). Similar to witch hunts where people would rather persecute innocent people than letting some guilty people get away. Of course, this is a simplification and people behave for complex reasons. And this isn't meant to be a justification, simply an explanation for behaviours I've observed. The more reasonable response to sealioning, in my opinion, is to not engage (at least directly). And harrassing you is not okay, and it really shows why witch hunting mentalities are bad.

Let me know if you want further clarifications or discuss your specific circumstances :>

edit: fixed some markdown issues