That’s the thing about martyrs - nobody NEEDS to fill his shoes. They just need to claim to be “carrying on his legacy” and constantly refer back to him, and that’s good enough for a large portion of the cult.
We’ve seen this exact thing happen with a lot of cults that have gone mainstream - it happened with Mormonism, and it happened with Scientology.
That’s the thing about martyrs - nobody NEEDS to fill his shoes. They just need to claim to be “carrying on his legacy” and constantly refer back to him, and that’s good enough for a large portion of the cult.
We’ve seen this exact thing happen with a lot of cults that have gone mainstream - it happened with Mormonism, and it happened with Scientology.