“In [some] cults, as in the Third Reich, safety rests in utter conformity—in self-abnegation. The fate of individuals subjected to this environment is expressed simply in the following dream of a German woman in 1933: ‘In place of the street signs which had been abolished, posters had been set up on every corner, proclaiming in white letters on a black background the twenty words people were not allowed to say. The first was Lord—to be on the safe side I must have dreamt it in English. I don’t recall the following words and possibly didn’t even dream them, but the last one was I.’”

—Willa Appel, from Cults in America: Programmed for Paradise, 1983.