General Discussion

And I agree that you are correct to a very large degree.

Often these churches followed boot camp training. First they would preach that we are all worms, then they would get you to identify with their cause and celebrate your rebirth as a wonderful being. In various forms, the same psychological nonsense built.
In the churches I was curious about I stayed longer and saw more until the horror was, for me, too much.

The subtle ones lied about their core beliefs and tried to get you in thinking they were accepting and believed the way you did. This would shift as they felt you were getting invested in their community.

Eventually you faced their pattern of breaking people down. If you didn't see it happen to someone else first and put some distance in, it was going to happen to you.

In the worst cults, one of the things they would do is have you confront others for their lies and issues. The point of that is to alienate you from everyone else. Another thing they would do is make insane changes in the beliefs. This was were they weeded out the less malleable. If you held to what they preached a week ago over the change they just arbitrarily made, you were strongly pressured to accept the new truth.

If you read the Jonestown manuscripts, and let me give a strong trigger warning before you do, you can see how seemingly reasonable people can eventually be brainwashed and/or filtered down to the "Right" people who will stand by the worst possible choices and outcomes. https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=29081

A conservative has a good chance of loosing their family, friends, job, church and community if they escape their delusions. So the same pressures are often present for a right winger as would be felt by a member of a death cult. The scaffold made for Pence shows that this is not an exaggeration of how things might turn out. No one who understands mainstream optics, or law, or civilized interaction would be thinking, "Hang Pence if he doesn't help us overturn the legal process of democratic elections in the United States." So yes, a lot of them really are in a cult. I suspect that you would not be hard pressed to find someone who will answer, "Yes, I think Pence should have been hung," if you ask the right question.

With that said, cultists often escape. Often the see the horrors and become the strongest fighters against the cult. So helping them escape the group think can, I think, be worth the effort.