Pirate Party Leader to Be Prague mayor

Yes, because in Eastern Europe, if you're even slightly left, or don't agree with U.S. on everything, you must be a communist.

Apparently from one block to the other.

As someone from that part of the world, I generally find it annoying that people automatically assume left == communist because of the Soviet past. As a result, we mostly have only right-wing or neoliberal type parties in Eastern Europe, because if you propose any sort of social democracy, you'd end up being attached to communism.

I view it as very unfortunate and simplistic. As in, communism didn't work out, let's run waaay to the right. Oh, right is bad? Let's run even further to the right, that outta fix it!

(Failing to realize that what you really dislike is authoritarianism, which these all share.)

How about a social democracy? The Scandinavian model? Market economy with strong social programs.

So you could start a business without being absolutely mortified about what'd happen if it fails, for example? How else is the overall standard of living supposed to improve over there? Corporate tax cuts and trickle-down economics has been tried, it doesn't work.

Low taxes are not necessarily rightist, people would want low and fair taxes even within a full-on socialism; same with everything else you listed, IMO these ideas are neutral. Keeping deficit low is just basic financial management, everyone wants that regardless of their ideas about control.

The difference is whether they want more free market or more government control, even if the control is very cheap, straight forward and efficient or even beneficial, it doesn't matter.

The Chinese communist party also lowered taxes and tries to lower bureaucracy but remains communist (I know, it's much more complex - let's not dive into Chinese politics - and I'm not trying to compare them, just an example how a popularly "rightist" idea can be proposed/implemented by a leftist party).

But yes, as you said they're appealing to people on the right - because as someone who's pro-free market it's better to vote moderate left (and hope they won't focus on the ideas you don't like) than conservative right (who will definitely focus on ideas you don't like these ideas are their main point).

Can you explain more what the platform of the "Pirate" party is? As an American I would have thought the the "Pirate" party would be far right libertarian (free market, downsize government, reduce or eliminate taxes).

At the same time yes, they propose to downsize the government and tax reduction, but not elimination. They also propose digitalization of government and reduction of bureaucracy, but they also want that as a base to build more control on.

Many specifics of the Czech Republic are at play here, since the party is no longer a minor one and at the same time is the only major "non traditional" one (no historical baggage including people - actually that's very important) that isn't Babiš (ANO, but everyone knows the party is him, basically - including people in the party who went public), it attracts the interest of many very different people ranging from left wing radicals to free market anarchists; people who weren't as "radical" (they're not radical at all but definitely more than other parties) rather joined ODS (right, major party), ČSSD (left, almost irrelevant) or TOP09 (center, now totally irrelevant).

Then the free market anarchists created their own party (Svobodní - "The Free Ones", never even became relevant except a very tiny little bit of relevance in the EU parliament) and the result is that Pirate party is more leftist. Sadly soon after conservatives have "attacked" (joined and changed the program) the party and made it conservative, and a lot of previously pro-free market people became conservative because of the immigration crisis and rapidly increasing EU influence that nobody here really likes, left or right (these same issues also gave rise to the fourth biggest party SPD, which is an openly racist pro-russian one, luckily they're largely irrelevant except for municipal politics in few places).