Only when mempools are not congested. If there is regular traffic with higher fees, then transactions can be relayed for free.
...but if there isn't regular traffic with higher fees, the attacker loses money to miners.
So, you can start with 0.1 sat/vB, then keep bumping Alice -> Bob, until reaching something like 0.99 sat/vB, then start bumping Bob->Charlie incrementally, and so on. Miners using 1 sat/vB will never see that traffic at all, and nodes accepting 0.1 sat/vB will keep broadcasting it between themselves.
Again, this attack is what Rule 3 of BIP125 already protects nodes against. In order for a replacement to be accepted, it has to pay a higher fee rate (in sat/vbyte) and also a higher absolute fee than the transactions being replaced.