Ι wouldn't classify the Khmer Rouge as a cult exactly. Just really fucked up and ass backward. Everyone was basically winging it based on a terrible misunderstanding of pretty much everything and disregard for human life. They mostly had no idea what they were doing and power was actually not extremely centralized like you'd expect from a cult, because of how incompetent the leadership was.
On communism: "We are not communists ... we are revolutionaries" who do not 'belong to the commonly accepted grouping of communist Indochina." (Ieng Sary, 1977, quoted by Vickery, p. 288).
On Marxism-Leninism: "The first public admission that the 'revolutionary organization' was Marxist-Leninist in its orientation came in the memorial services for Mao Zedong held in Phnom Penh on 18 Sept., 1976" (Chandler, in Chandler, ed., p. 55, note 28).:
"They [Kampuchean spokesmen] claim that the CPK is a Marxist-Leninist Party, but say nothing about the writings of these two men." (Chandler, p. 45)
and People's Temple was a total psyop after the 1960s. In fact, I have seen little evidence to show that Jim Jones wasn't himself a patsy in the larger late 1970s push to re-consolidate CIA power. Leo Ryan was notoriously anti-CIA
Ι wouldn't classify the Khmer Rouge as a cult exactly. Just really fucked up and ass backward. Everyone was basically winging it based on a terrible misunderstanding of pretty much everything and disregard for human life. They mostly had no idea what they were doing and power was actually not extremely centralized like you'd expect from a cult, because of how incompetent the leadership was.
Khmer Rouge said they were never Communists:
and People's Temple was a total psyop after the 1960s. In fact, I have seen little evidence to show that Jim Jones wasn't himself a patsy in the larger late 1970s push to re-consolidate CIA power. Leo Ryan was notoriously anti-CIA
Not impossible.