Technically, there was no rewriting of history. Just a single (but very large) transaction was added to the consensus rules that (IIRC) replaced the TheDAO smart contract code.
Given that this incident resulted in the Ethereum/Ethereum Classic split, the "centralized cabal" was not very effective. The community voted with their feet and many went to Ethereum Classic.
So the solution to save "decentralization" was for a centralized cabal to literally rewrite history?