The Dance of the Zombies

A zombie is not simply dead. It still moves. It still makes noises. It still believes itself to be alive. It even attacks — only without knowing that it no longer participates in real life. The FDP is the first German party to have fully reached this state. The SPD will follow soon.

I. The Zombie and Its Self-Image

What distinguishes a political zombie from a dead party is not the extent of the damage. It is the absence of recognition. A party that recognises its death can dissolve, transform, merge. A party that does not recognise it dances on — with the same apparatus, the same rituals, the same faces earnestly talking about renewal, as if renewal were a question of will and not of substance.

The FDP holds Epiphany meetings. Passes resolutions. Elects leaders. Issues press releases. The full apparatus of a parliamentary party — only without a parliament. Voted out of the Bundestag, voted out of its home state of Baden-Württemberg, and on 22 March 2026 voted out of Rhineland-Palatinate — with 2.1 percent, even though it was still a governing party there.

The day after, Christian Dürr resigned as party leader. The entire executive resigned. And Dürr announced that he would stand again at the party congress in May. He resigns in order to stand again. That is not an admission. That is the perfect definition of the zombie dance: the form of consequence without its content. The zombie takes a bow. And dances on.

This is not a criticism of individuals. Christian Dürr is no worse a person than his predecessors. He is the leader of a party that no longer structurally exists — and which structurally cannot recognise this, because the recognition would destroy the organisation that made him leader.

II. The FDP: Liberalism as Label

The FDP did not lose political liberalism. It packed it into a drawer from which it could no longer escape. Freedom was equated with economic freedom. Economic freedom was equated with the freedom of capital. The freedom of capital became the party identity.

This worked for a while — in a society that after decades of social market economy genuinely wanted more economic self-responsibility. Guido Westerwelle won almost 15 percent in 2009. That was the peak — and simultaneously the beginning of the end, because success accelerated the settling-in. When a formula works, one has no occasion to rethink it. Until it stops working. Then it is too late.

What liberalism would actually be — the freedom of the individual against the power of the state and corporations, the freedom of those who cannot yet afford it, not only those who already have it — had no place left in the FDP. Karl-Hermann Flach, who in the early 1970s had formulated a social liberalism connecting both dimensions, had become a historical footnote. Gerhart Baum, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger — marginal figures in a party that confused freedom with tax cuts.

When the coalition broke down and the D-Day paper became public — the internal strategy document proving that the coalition break had been planned long in advance — that was not the beginning of the end. It was the revelation of an end that had long since begun. Voters did not see a party courageously defending its convictions. They saw a party that had deceived its coalition partners — and called that liberal.

III. The SPD: Social Democracy as Memory

The SPD is a different case — slower, deeper, more tragic. Those who know the history of German social democracy know what has been lost: the party that helped shape the Basic Law, that risked Ostpolitik, that connected the social market economy with the welfare state. Brandt, Schmidt, the young Schröder — these were figures of political weight who made decisions that shaped generations.

What remains is the structure without the content. The union connection without the workers, who have long since been voting AfD. The welfare state idea without the vision of what a welfare state could mean in the 21st century. The party apparatus, the functionaries, the resolutions — the full operation of a people's party in a country where it is no longer a people's party.

Below 15 percent at the 2025 federal election — the historically worst result since the founding of the republic. And Rhineland-Palatinate on 22 March 2026: 25.9 percent — minus almost ten points, historically worst result in the state, voted out after 35 years of government responsibility. The gap to the AfD, which more than doubled to 19.5 percent: six points. The reaction of party leader Bärbel Bas the day after: no resignation, no personnel consequences, the leadership was "unanimously of the view" that a long debate made no sense now. And the analysis? Communication problems. Wrong candidates. Too little digital presence. Not: the model is exhausted.

That is the zombie pattern in its purest form. The zombie does not analyse its own condition. It analyses how it could dance better.

IV. The General Pattern

FDP and SPD are not exceptions. They are the first visible cases of a general pattern — the pattern of political organisations that have outlived their purpose and yet continue to exist.

Political parties arise to represent a social conflict: labour against capital, freedom against state, preservation against change. When this conflict dissolves or changes — when the old fronts are no longer the real fronts — the party loses its foundation. But it does not immediately lose its structure. Structures outlive their reasons.

The real conflicts of 2026 are different from those of 1970 or 1990. Global versus national. Technological disruption versus social cohesion. Short-term economic interests versus long-term viability. Autocratic simplification versus democratic complexity. Not one of these conflict pairs corresponds cleanly to the programme of any of the established parties. All try to press new conflicts into old pigeonholes — and wonder when the content does not fit.

V. The Legacy

What remains when the zombie finally goes down? That is the actually interesting question — and the one that is rarely asked.

The liberal idea — freedom of the individual, protection against state and private power, the connection of economic and personal freedom — has not disappeared because the FDP has disappeared. It is orphaned. Nobody represents it consistently. The FDP diverted it, the other parties never took it seriously.

The social democratic idea — protection of the weaker, limitation of market power, investment in the common — has not disappeared because the SPD is shrinking. It is equally orphaned. The SPD degraded it to an administrative task, the other parties serve it only selectively.

Orphaned ideas seek new carriers. Sometimes they find good ones. Sometimes they find bad ones — movements that use the language of freedom or social justice but mean something else. That is the actual danger of the zombie dance: not the disappearance of the parties, but the vacuum they leave behind.

The FDP disappears into the void. The SPD follows. What they leave behind are not only empty party offices and unemployed functionaries. They leave behind orphaned ideas — and the question of who takes them up. That is the question that counts. Not the dance. But what comes after the dance.

VI. What Comes After the Dance

There are three possibilities. The first: the orphaned ideas are absorbed by existing parties — CDU, Greens, BSW. That would be the best that could happen. Parties that become broader because they take up real needs rather than ignoring them.

The second: new parties arise that carry the orphaned ideas — smaller, more focused, without the burden of the decades. That is possible, but difficult. New parties have a structurally poor starting position in Germany: the five-percent threshold, media attention, financing rules.

The third: the vacuum is filled by movements that are not parties — populist, authoritarian, charismatic movements that use the language of the orphaned ideas without their substance. That is the danger described in the essay on the waiting structure of the AfD: not a better answer to the orphaned needs, but their instrumentalisation.

Which of the three possibilities prevails is not decided. It depends on whether Germany's political culture is capable of stepping out of the pattern of the settled-in — and taking ideas more seriously than identities. That is an open question. The zombies are still dancing.