Are You Being Reborn?
Why I'm creating Alata Magazine
Some of you have followed me since the beginning of my journey as a journalist.
I will not write a tiresome record of my resumé, if you’re interested in more details on my background, you can find them here. What I feel is important to tell you is why I’m creating a new magazine called Alata.
I set out these accomplishments, such as they are, not to impress you or to congratulate myself but to demonstrate that I was being primed to be an establishment agent.
I was born and raised in Milan, Italy, and earned my graduate and postgraduate degrees in some of the ‘best-ranked’ political science and philosophy universities in the world. I undertook a training program in journalism in which I was one of two students to receive a Gold Standard with a 100% score in shorthand coding. I was interviewing for a future job at the World Bank while preparing to undertake my second postgraduate degree at the LSE in philosophy of science.
I was making my way in the world with the 'right' mindset. My parents were proud to call me their daughter, especially since I was considered a nightmare by them and my teachers in my teenage years. I used to purposefully fail in school. But I was only proud of myself then in a superficial sense.
I felt something was profoundly wrong in my society. But the answers to the questions of how or why eluded me. I only knew that our environment was hostile to us. I did not use social media, so I could not explore this feeling with other like-minded individuals. My life was the same one I was living in real time. Often, those thoughts caused an agonizing sense of loneliness.
As my first job, I moved to the Arab world as a journalist, as I was curious about the issue of Islam gaining controversy in Europe. I was thrust into a new dimension, and my utopian, cosmopolitan views were quickly shattered, although my dreams of a better future for my people never changed. What was meant to be a brief internship turned into moving to a Muslim country for a year. My life was no longer the linear one defined for me by familial and societal expectations. Still, despite its chaotic nature, for some peculiar reason, it felt perfectly right. If only because I felt alive.
I had been rebellious since my teenage years, but suddenly, my rebellion assumed form; a proper direction.
I worked as a journalist for various Arab newspapers, sometimes fearing for my safety, reporting on taboo issues. My first interview was with an ex-Guantanamo Bay detainee accused of terrorism who refused to shake my hand and, as I later found out, lied throughout the entire interview. I reported on unspoken issues like the lives of persecuted Christian minorities, forged female virginity tests, and the beginning of the migratory crisis into Europe. I quickly discovered the deceit behind trusted institutions. Ironically, I wrote an exposé on the World Bank as my first investigative piece. I was fired by the former information minister of an Arab country, who was at this point editor of one of the newspaper I was working for, because he believed my articles were too controversial. But I also found a moving genuineness in the citizens I spoke to, who were powerless in front of these systems.
I returned to Milan at the age of 24. I found myself changed. I had a new-found sense of purpose, and God was rewarding me for it. I could have become a foreign correspondent from dangerous zones across the world. I enjoyed the adrenaline. But I realized that was part of the malaise of my society. Having no purpose of our own, journalists my age would venture overseas to marry causes that did not belong to them. Instead, the contrast from a Muslim society to a European one awakened me: we needed to regain the sense of who we were. I abstracted myself almost entirely from the banal and vulgar bourgeois culture I had grown up with, which had always irritated me. Now I knew why.
From working for a destitute newspaper that refused to pay its employees and pitching dozens of articles with no replies, editors suddenly contacted me on social media, asking me to write for them. Authenticity and courage repay more than credentials. I was unleashed, no longer catering to expectations or caged by formality.
But that part of me seeking external validation and acceptance remained present. I was free, but only partially.
I was working for Italian newspapers while undertaking the state exam, desperate to receive the “highest diploma” from the Italian government to practice as a journalist, which I achieved. Simultaneously, I freelanced for American and English newspapers and magazines, writing in-depth features on politics, war, and religion. These were exciting times, reporting on fringe neofascists in Italy, traveling often to DC to get to know other like-minded American journalists, and interviewing Steve Bannon in Rome on his new populist vision. Visiting Hong Kong with the Infowars team and being hit by a brick and a rubber bullet to report on the cause of those rioting against China’s totalitarianism, to show the reality of a growing Chinese influence in the West, and because I had studied at The University of Hong Kong as part of my undergraduate degree.
During the beginning of the Covid lockdown, I applied for and won a fellowship to work at The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page. During this time, I had also been asked to work for Italian intelligence, something I kept as secret until I decided that such a controlling existence was not meant for me. I moved to New York, in what was the most challenging period of my life, which I will one day detail for my followers, if only so it may help them should they be able to relate to my experience. From the outside, I had won a shiny prize for excellence in journalism; I was ‘winning’, but I felt like I was dying on the inside. While I’m grateful for the experience and learned from the professionals I worked with, I felt the weight of upholding my own integrity, and another false idol of prestige was abruptly destroyed before my eyes.
I was lost. I returned to Milan disillusioned with journalism after my fellowship during Covid. I left it behind to join an art school, not even a renowned one - it had just opened a year prior. But I loved the spontaneous nature of it, which one can only find in new projects. My life was beginning to take an even less linear direction. My friends would ask me, painting? You’ve have had a rewarding career in journalism, why don’t you return to what you were successful at doing? But I needed to leave that past behind. My accomplishments felt hollow; they were only framed in my studio to console my ego. I wanted to focus on the one thing that I had complete control over: my art. I was always a fighter, but by this point I was tired of fighting. I wanted to start creating.
Nonetheless, I felt a divine calling recently that my dream of founding a media page, which at this point had all but disappeared, now needed to come to fruition. They say that you need to almost die to be be able to shed your old skin and be reborn. I could no longer escape the realities of the world hiding behind a canvas, I needed to shape it in whatever way I could. What was the point of those failures, if not to bring something even greater into fruition with the lessons I had learned along the way? To be of service to others? Virgil said that the noblest motive is the public good.
I asked myself, are you not strong enough to find out whether this is your fate?
My future in painting is one I hold dear, too. It has another purpose. I regret absolutely nothing about my choices; in fact, joining an art academy was necessary to fulfill my creative aspirations, which had hitherto been ignored. If you, as a reader, feel the same way, I encourage you to join whatever creative pursuit is of your interest. But I could not turn a blind eye to the world of media that shaped so much of my identity, and more importantly, that has the potential to awaken us in such profound, transformative ways.
This magazine is an apotheosis of this journey. Now, I feel truly free, prepared for what will come. When intention is unshackled from the burden of external opinion, it is based on sincerity. Everything you will find in this magazine is authentic, from the literary contributions to the creative images behind it. Our motivation is pure, and our loyalty is with our readers. We will surely make mistakes along the way, we intend to learn by the trial of fire. There is no other way.
This project is for you, for those looking to awaken the society we inhabit and shape a new future for it: our society - Western society. If you’re interested, subscribe, and I will send you an email from the magazine detailing its aim…
Here.
For my Italian followers, here.
Yay finally
Love it 👍👍