Extremism is separate from coercion. It's entirely possible to have a coercive cult that has non-extreme beliefs. Jonestown was, in several ways, a cult with n

Extremism is separate from coercion. It's entirely possible to have a coercive cult that has non-extreme beliefs. Jonestown was, in several ways, a cult with non-extreme beliefs. They did have a charismatic and dangerously mentally ill leader (who did not start out by any means as an awful person). But they collectively isolated themselves, rather than cutting off ties. And they did initially because of quite radical small-L liberal beliefs as well as politically socialist beliefs. Things that non-cult people think now. It did not become truly coercive as a power structure until quite late on, mostly when they had isolated themselves and in many cases become physically ill, and in part it was still a collective delusion. Even then, in many ways, Jonestown beliefs were not particularly extreme in a broad evangelical sense (rather than a US white evangelical sense, which is now a culture that could be defined largely non-religiously) if you specifically put aside their individually extreme devotion to Jones.