Right now, one in five Greeks is out of work.
When people have no money, no jobs, and plenty of anger, extremists suddenly get more of a look-in.
It's a worrying trend through history, and it's showing up again in Europe.
For some, its echoes... it echoes chilling memories of the 1930s.
Tonight, senior international correspondent Matthew Chance looks at how ongoing hardship has changed the political debate in Greece.
There are some things in Greece that just don't change.
This old Athens eatery in Monastiraki has been serving up traditional gyros, or kababs, for generations.
Politics in recent decades has been another constant.
But as the restaurant's owner shows me photographs of past celebrities and politicians who've eaten here,
the political landscape has radically changed. The old guard has been swept aside.
I am sad, because I believe Greeks are very peaceful people.
This is where democracy was founded. We are a democratic country. We were never extremists.
But for the first time in a Greek election, an extreme ultranationalist party has been elected to parliament.
Golden Dawn is a thinly veiled neo-Nazi group linked with attacks on immigrants they want deported.
Sometimes there have been some big accusations about us and in the end what was it?
It was between immigrants from Pakistan, but they...
someone from Pakistan beat another guy from Pakistan for their own reasons, and he was blaming us and so on and so forth.
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?)
Yes. Maybe they are protecting themselves.
Are you... so, you're acknowledging they do do it?
Maybe they are protecting themselves like people who are... (And now you're explaining it?)
Yeah. People... no, no, no, no, no. I'm saying that the situation in Greece is terrible.
People are going out from their homes, and they are robbed, raped, killed for nothing.
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.
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.
Views once only voiced on the fringes of political debate now appear mainstream.
And it's not just the neo-Nazis who've benefited.
For months now, popular -- often violent -- protests against austerity have been spearheaded by anarchists and far left-wing groups like Communists.
The election was the first chance for Greeks to vent their anger at the ballot box instead of the streets.
Now, the Coalition of the Radical Left who I met in their own television studio has emerged as a major political force.
Their utopian pledge:
to cancel Greek debt and restore living standards to pre-austerity levels. They could form the next government.
Our basic priorities is... are the salvation of all the minimum social standards. And this means wages, pensions, health care and public education.
If you want to increase pensions and wages and living standards, who's going to pay for that?
The answer is very simple: the rich will pay for the crisis they created.
Back in Monastiraki, there are still many things that unite Greeks.
But this election has exposed and widened their divisions, setting Greece down an uncertain path.