A Year With Pluralia

Birthdays tend to remind of someone’s significance. It might seem no time has passed, but here we go, it has already been a year that our project Pluralia is in existence. Congratulations to all! To you who read it, to us who write it and keep it alive.

Here are just a few figures. More than 284 articles have been published so far. And more than 2400 posts appeared in the newsfeed. The publication has produced 272 balanced and considered newspaper reviews, covering the most significant media publications from around the world. The prestigious Opinions column, edited by Alessandro Cassieri, which brings together big names of leading international experts and analysts on a weekly basis, already has 48 issues. A total of 58 famous authors were published, with their brief biographies outlined in a separate list.

But here is the figure that gives the most insight into Pluralia: the number of visitors to its pages, which are released simultaneously and in real time in four languages – Italian, English, Russian, and Chinese – amounted to 50,722 people from 168 countries! The project is a kind of benchmark for readers attentive to major political, as well as economic, cultural, and social topics. It is very important to recognize readers scattered across different countries who have found in its pages an alternative, necessary, pluralistic voice in an information flow increasingly marked by bias and single-mindedness.

A year ago, in our opening article, we answered the question of who we are:

A wide and free space that promotes cultural debate, with a multi-polar approach, through an online platform with a strong media projection. A living think tank open to people from all schools of thought, all latitudes and politico-cultural areas. A space for constant reflection, where everyone is intellectually “orthodox” and no one can be considered a “heretic,” to find together solutions for a peaceful, inclusive, and sustainable future.

One year later, we can proudly say that the goal of creating a new space for dialog and confrontation has been at least partially achieved. So many different opinions, amazing views on geopolitics, economics, affairs of nations and countries were expressed on the virtual pages of Pluralia! There was no shortage of invasion of cultural life and the constant struggle for new knowledge. Knowledge makes us conscious. Knowledge makes us free. Knowledge helps us make good decisions.

Alas, we have to admit that a year later, the world is a much worse place. The planet seems to be hurtling towards new catastrophes: it is an increasingly divided world, in an increasingly Manichean way. It is a world of Cold War, racial and interstate divisions, it is a world of rejection and resentment of migrants. But it is also a world of continued pollution, a world of global warming, a world at war with nature, which seems to be the enemy. What should not be lost, what should not be compromised, is a multipolar view, attentive to the multiplicity of viewpoints, to the thousand facets, to the diversity of Opinions that move through our world.

This is the promise and at the same time the wish we make to ourselves as we celebrate one year of Pluralia’s life: to never settle for sameness, for uniformity, which make us not equals but new slaves.