> Without the "generally considered to be extremist or false" it would be quite hard to even identify a cult.
The extremism is an integral part of what makes folks regard something a cult. Would anyone have cared that NXIVM was running dodgy self-improvement seminars upstate, if they hadn't also been coercing and branding women?
> I consider that to be a cult, if one of the milder religious ones
Various sects within the various organised religions certainly qualify as cults. I think a fair case could be made for many of the milder ones as well, on the basis of how they tend to treat women/children/etc (restrictive rules about clothing/education/personal-freedom/etc)
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.
The extremism is an integral part of what makes folks regard something a cult. Would anyone have cared that NXIVM was running dodgy self-improvement seminars upstate, if they hadn't also been coercing and branding women?
> I consider that to be a cult, if one of the milder religious ones
Various sects within the various organised religions certainly qualify as cults. I think a fair case could be made for many of the milder ones as well, on the basis of how they tend to treat women/children/etc (restrictive rules about clothing/education/personal-freedom/etc)