Our editorial policy

The mission behind launching the Alternative project was multifaceted. On the one hand, the responsible team - mostly composed of leftist activists - intended to offer the better image of what it means to be leftists: commitment.

Leftists have been famous for their excessive and endless debating, reiterating past slogans and holding firm to mini-details that form the current leftist "faith." The mentioned details are related to a peculiar living style which tends to distance itself from common consumerism and selects its own social behavior including excessive drinking of alcoholic beverages, listening to revolutionary music and posting pictures of former communist heroes and icons.

The idea behind Alternative was to reflect a different image about a new leftist who would be ready to organize, commit and produce.

But the product alone would not be enough. The team believed that the product should present rethought-of leftism after the colossal failure of leftist thought worldwide in the near past.

The goal of issuing Alternative was not "to indoctrinate the masses." It was not either within our intention to blacken out non-leftist dogma. Leftists have always sought democracy and by issuing a publication with a single ideology, as was the case under the communist dictatorships with a single party rule and a single newspaper, would be only reproducing leftism in its outdated form.

This said, the Alternative team decided to reflect the image of a leftist institution - a model - whose commitment and sincerity aimed not only at conveying leftist beliefs, but also debating the different forms of human thought.

The end result was a monthly newspaper, both in print and online, that intended to promote debate, freedom of expression and democracy. Alternative also wanted to secure coverage of blackened out youth news, give the youth from all sides a space to disclose their muted opinion and introduce apathetic young people to different issues.

So far, Alternative has provoked both the left that accused us of betraying the principle of indoctrination and the right that accused us of propagating anti-rightist thought. To us, this made us sure that what we were doing was right and that we should continue along the same lines.

The most important of all, we would never serve as an indoctrination tool that reiterates for the millionth time outdated and obsolete leftist slogans.