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Right now, one in five Greeks is out of work.

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When people have no money, no jobs, and plenty of anger, extremists suddenly get more of a look-in. 

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It's a worrying trend through history, and it's showing up again in Europe. 

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For some, its echoes... it echoes chilling memories of the 1930s. 

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Tonight, senior international correspondent Matthew Chance looks at how ongoing hardship has changed the political debate in Greece.

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There are some things in Greece that just don't change. 

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This old Athens eatery in Monastiraki has been serving up traditional gyros, or kababs, for generations. 

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Politics in recent decades has been another constant.

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But as the restaurant's owner shows me photographs of past celebrities and politicians who've eaten here, 

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the political landscape has radically changed. The old guard has been swept aside.

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I am sad, because I believe Greeks are very peaceful people. 

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This is where democracy was founded. We are a democratic country. We were never extremists.

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But for the first time in a Greek election, an extreme ultranationalist party has been elected to parliament. 

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Golden Dawn is a thinly veiled neo-Nazi group linked with attacks on immigrants they want deported.

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Sometimes there have been some big accusations about us and in the end what was it? 

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It was between immigrants from Pakistan, but they...

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someone from Pakistan beat another guy from Pakistan for their own reasons, and he was blaming us and so on and so forth. 

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We have proofs for this. You can just go and find out. (Are you denying that members of the Golden Dawn carry out violent attacks against immigrants?)

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Yes. Maybe they are protecting themselves.

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Are you... so, you're acknowledging they do do it?

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Maybe they are protecting themselves like people who are... (And now you're explaining it?)

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Yeah. People... no, no, no, no, no. I'm saying that the situation in Greece is terrible. 

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People are going out from their homes, and they are robbed, raped, killed for nothing.

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Well, sitting in this sunny cafe outside parliament, you might be mistaken for thinking that nothing's really changed in Greece and that things aren't so bad after all. 

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But there has been a dramatic shift here away from the center ground. Austerity and economic hardship have pushed ordinary Greeks to look for solutions in the extremes. 

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Views once only voiced on the fringes of political debate now appear mainstream.

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And it's not just the neo-Nazis who've benefited. 

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For months now, popular -- often violent -- protests against austerity have been spearheaded by anarchists and far left-wing groups like Communists. 

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The election was the first chance for Greeks to vent their anger at the ballot box instead of the streets.

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Now, the Coalition of the Radical Left who I met in their own television studio has emerged as a major political force. 

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Their utopian pledge:

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to cancel Greek debt and restore living standards to pre-austerity levels. They could form the next government.

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Our basic priorities is... are the salvation of all the minimum social standards. And this means wages, pensions, health care and public education.

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If you want to increase pensions and wages and living standards, who's going to pay for that?

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The answer is very simple: the rich will pay for the crisis they created.

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Back in Monastiraki, there are still many things that unite Greeks. 

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But this election has exposed and widened their divisions, setting Greece down an uncertain path.