Going, going… almost gone: the Czech Communists and their (final?) transformation

More than a century after the Communist party was formed in Czechoslovakia, it is still there and living its adaptation. Since 1989 it was seen as a relic of the Ancient communist regime and supposed to disappear quickly. This didn't happen during the first 30 years of continual post-communist evolution, and even if we should have witnessed the weakening of the basis of the party, it was only during the 2021 general elections that the party realized its worst results ever, being even unable to enter the parliament for the first time of his long history even. This result is given by a lot of causes; in this paper, we will focus on the changes that occurred during the last decade, when the party progressively turned "brown", focusing more and more on illiberal and nationalist rhetoric. This turn is deeply influenced by some global phenomena: the financial crisis, the migration crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and, last but not least, the Russian aggression of Ukraine. But there are also some internal and national specifics explaining such ideological collapse enabling the gathering of illiberal groups. We think, on the one hand, about the relic of the normalized communist party (presenting itself today as the only real nation-protecting party) and the rise of technopopulism in Czech republic (taking a large part of the communist former electorate). Such transformation is not only about the Czech current illiberalism in its diversity but more generally about the loss of classical political/ideological references within the left allowing such a priori unexpected turns.