Hello again, I'm Aran Alney.

Last month in Berlin, I got a lesson and I want to pass it along.

It's about repression, how it's worked in the past and how it's working now.

Paperwork matters, especially to a brutal dictatorship.

Documentation is almost as important as maintaining a climate of fear.

I got a tour of the records maintained by Stasi, the secret police for communist East Germany.

The files are massive.

They contain millions of personal secrets revealed by colleagues, by friends,

even by spouses, with possible consequences including imprisonment and torture and death.

Dagmar Hofsted was my guide. The records obviously did create a great extent of legitimacy,

putting down things on paper, in a as a ministry creates the feeling of that it's an official activity

and it is in turn reinforcing the legitimacy of thought for those acting within these institutions.

So that was then. What about now? of thought for those acting within these institutions.

So that was then. What about now?

When I came back from Germany, I heard the first segment of the podcast Caliphate with Rukmini Kalamachi of the New York Times.

She explains what she's trying to do.

Collect records left behind by ISIS, the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq.

And as for me, I'm trying to understand ISIS.

And one thing I've learned is that if you're able to get to the buildings that they occupied right after they are liberated, and I mean right

after.

Can you describe what you're doing?

Well, we're in a room off the side of a church that ISIS had used as a base.

...