The Czech Republic during the Covid-19 pandemic. Populism continues to run at full speed

Our paper considers three parties in the Czech Republic that display populist features: the ruling party ANO and two non-governmental parties, Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD) and the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM), which nevertheless both often back the government in the parliament, KSČM officially. Embodying different faces of populism, all three represent different versions of what the mainstream literature labels as populist parties. This paper shows that the current pandemic crisis has not yet transformed their rhetoric but has brought to light its most important features. In our paper we first explain the broader political context, the spread of COVID-19 and the political measures to address the virus in the Czech Republic. It looks at the populist discourse of the three parties and, finally, their strategies of (de)politicisation regarding the COVID-19 issue. In the case of ANO especially, there was a strong tendency to try to depoliticise the issue by involving experts and especially epidemiologists in the discussion.