Much of the literature on democratic erosion and the rise of illiberalism has focused on the role of right-wing actors and the incremental fragmentation of the cordon sanitaire. This article turns to a comparatively underexplored phenomenon: the Left’s role in mainstreaming and normalising right-wing illiberal repertoires. It examines Czechia and the electoral coalition Stačilo! (Enough!), formed by the once-dominant Social Democratic Party (ČSSD) and the longstanding anti-system Communist Party (KSČM) ahead of the 2025 general election. Drawing on the ideational production of the associated thought collective Svatopluk, the study traces how electorally declining leftist parties embraced a “red–brown” repertoire to secure electoral survival. Based on qualitative analysis, the article argues that this ideological realignment reflects strategic choices made by party elites, who have embraced all-out illiberalism across political, economic, cultural, and geopolitical domains. Rather than securing renewal, this turn represents the breakdown of a “Left National” strategy, as efforts to combine welfare populism with cultural conservatism have culminated not in electoral recovery but in a fiasco. By expanding theories of party competition, the study identifies a novel mechanism of illiberal diffusion in post-socialist Eastern Europe, showing how cross-ideological convergence exposes existing political divides.
