I'm a dual citizen of America and Czechia and have lived in America most my life so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Things are a bit complicated in Czechia right now. ANO is a populist liberal centrist party that aims to upset the typical neoliberal order in Czechia, and is the leading party. The Communist Party, for the first time since the fall of Czechoslovakia, has supported the government. The Social Democrats have recently joined with ANO in coalition. The only left parties of note are the Communist Party and the Social Democrats. The Social Democrats do have some Democratic Socialists in them, and so does the Communist Party. However, they are kind of shit and have allied with ANO purely because they oppose typical neoliberalism and have some populist politics. There are anarchists that go to Communist Party meetings as well, I'm of that flavor.
There is a pervasive opinion in Czechia, among voters for the Communist Party and opponents of the Communist party, that should the Communist party regain a plurality, they will coup the government once more like they did in 1948. I am not nearly this optimistic, there have been scandals and too many dealings among the central leadership with neoliberal states. The voting base for the Communist party is mostly among rural regions that benefited heavily from Communist rule, and a lot of cities tend to go to the liberals as there were many issues with the Communist party's governance of the urban areas in the past. The voting base is almost entirely boomers, but I've noticed a lot of young people like myself who support them. The more radical Communists tend to be Maoists due to the rural nature of the party. There is currently a struggle in the party between the old leadership and younger leadership. Every election cycle there are calls to ban the Communist Party.
The Communist Party is one of the more LGBT friendly parties in the country. I explicitly vote for them because my rep is the only LGBT friendly person to vote for on the ballot. He specifically sponsored and wrote many lgbt legislations, though they end up getting watered down every time by the liberal order that isn't so keen on progress yet.
There are some very fashy right libertarians in Czechia that support direct democracy. The less shitty of these is the Pirate Party, but the more shitty of these is the SPD.
As for the future? I think the Communist Party is reaching more of the youth lately, however a lot of the younger people support libertarian parties like the Pirate Party and the SPD. The current trend is towards a kind of anti-corruption pro-transparency Keynesian social democracy, which obviously is a joke because the movement is lead by a billionaire.
There's a lot of general angst about the central leadership. They aren't great. The rest of the party and reps, however, are quite nice and I enjoy talking with them. The general issue of the central leadership is they are holdovers from the past that get name recognition.
So are you not optimistic that the communist party will gain control over the government at some point, or are you not optimistic that they will be able to rebuff a coup if that happens?
Basically, yes. It might be possible that they can get a plurality but I doubt they'd do as much with it as in the past.
edit:
How it happened in the past is a Communist was elected to a key position as the head of police, purged the police and replaced them all with communists, and followed up with a coup. There is a certain worship of people that were part of the StB (Czech KGB basically) because some people think that they could do this again. I'm more skeptical of it due to the EU being a thing.
Czechia:
I'm a dual citizen of America and Czechia and have lived in America most my life so take what I say with a grain of salt.
Things are a bit complicated in Czechia right now. ANO is a populist liberal centrist party that aims to upset the typical neoliberal order in Czechia, and is the leading party. The Communist Party, for the first time since the fall of Czechoslovakia, has supported the government. The Social Democrats have recently joined with ANO in coalition. The only left parties of note are the Communist Party and the Social Democrats. The Social Democrats do have some Democratic Socialists in them, and so does the Communist Party. However, they are kind of shit and have allied with ANO purely because they oppose typical neoliberalism and have some populist politics. There are anarchists that go to Communist Party meetings as well, I'm of that flavor.
There is a pervasive opinion in Czechia, among voters for the Communist Party and opponents of the Communist party, that should the Communist party regain a plurality, they will coup the government once more like they did in 1948. I am not nearly this optimistic, there have been scandals and too many dealings among the central leadership with neoliberal states. The voting base for the Communist party is mostly among rural regions that benefited heavily from Communist rule, and a lot of cities tend to go to the liberals as there were many issues with the Communist party's governance of the urban areas in the past. The voting base is almost entirely boomers, but I've noticed a lot of young people like myself who support them. The more radical Communists tend to be Maoists due to the rural nature of the party. There is currently a struggle in the party between the old leadership and younger leadership. Every election cycle there are calls to ban the Communist Party.
The Communist Party is one of the more LGBT friendly parties in the country. I explicitly vote for them because my rep is the only LGBT friendly person to vote for on the ballot. He specifically sponsored and wrote many lgbt legislations, though they end up getting watered down every time by the liberal order that isn't so keen on progress yet.
There are some very fashy right libertarians in Czechia that support direct democracy. The less shitty of these is the Pirate Party, but the more shitty of these is the SPD.
As for the future? I think the Communist Party is reaching more of the youth lately, however a lot of the younger people support libertarian parties like the Pirate Party and the SPD. The current trend is towards a kind of anti-corruption pro-transparency Keynesian social democracy, which obviously is a joke because the movement is lead by a billionaire.
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There's a lot of general angst about the central leadership. They aren't great. The rest of the party and reps, however, are quite nice and I enjoy talking with them. The general issue of the central leadership is they are holdovers from the past that get name recognition.
So are you not optimistic that the communist party will gain control over the government at some point, or are you not optimistic that they will be able to rebuff a coup if that happens?
Basically, yes. It might be possible that they can get a plurality but I doubt they'd do as much with it as in the past.
edit:
How it happened in the past is a Communist was elected to a key position as the head of police, purged the police and replaced them all with communists, and followed up with a coup. There is a certain worship of people that were part of the StB (Czech KGB basically) because some people think that they could do this again. I'm more skeptical of it due to the EU being a thing.