I don’t think it’s up to what their followers believe. The key to their eventual downfall isn’t what their followers think, it’s what they think, and their own hubris is often enough to destroy them. At any rate, all it takes is one follower to turn on them and decide to take them out. Sooner or later, a kind of space opens up, and they will step into it because they can’t stop themselves. It usually comes from a direction nobody saw.