(AP photo)
European parties like Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain that have tended to carry the extremist label are now riding high. These parties ride over the waves of discontent and weariness born of crisis and seem to channel the unrealistic dreams of their electorates. But while their plans sometimes seem outrageous, they had better succeed - should they disappoint, a worse alternative awaits.
The European political landscape is changing. While European intellectuals love to make jokes at the expense of the more clownish elements of the U.S. Republican Party, its European counterpart is poised to continue its own ascent into power.
The list is long and daunting.
In France, Marine le Pen, strongly anti-EU, anti-immigration and a vocal supporter of Vladimir Putin, is outpolling every other known candidate in presidential polls. France elects a new president in 2017. In the United Kingdom, Nigel Farage's anti-EU and anti-immigration UKIP could play kingmaker in the next government coalition after Britain votes in May of this year.
In Sweden, the Sweden Democrats -- for a long time considered to be neo-Nazis -- have become so popular that moderate right-wing parties decided at the last moment to rally around their arch-enemies, the Social Democrats, to prevent a snap election which would surely have seen the Sweden Democrats make strong gains.
In Germany the anti-EU, anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland party has aligned itself with what can best be described as Germany's own version of the Tea Party, the popular Pegida movement. In Hungary, the Fidesz party thrives in government while its leader praises Vladimir Putin and welcomes the end of free democracy. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders' anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-EU Freedom Party has taken the lead in national polls and is expected to perform well during elections in March.
In Spain the new, left-wing Podemos party seems destined to win national elections slated for September and of course, Syriza in Greece just swooped into government on a bold platform of change.
But that platform turns out to be frail. Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras found closed doors in every corridor during their recent European tour aimed at cutting Greece's outstanding debts. This led Varoufakis to warn of the rise of Golden Dawn, a popular neo-Nazi party that has Swastika-like symbols in its flags. Golden Dawn activists like to beat up immigrants; their main plan is to rid Greece of foreigners.
"They are not neo-Nazis, they are Nazis," Varoufakis warned during a press conference in the Finance Ministry in Berlin, formerly the headquarters of Hermann Göring, one of the leaders of Adolf Hitler's Reich. Unimpressed, the German Finance minister yawned and cleaned his glasses.
Varoufakis' warning may be written off as hyperbole spewed by a proud man who knows he has lost. But judging by the above list of parties poised to take power, perhaps it is time for the centrist parties now in power to admit that the medicine they have been offering ever since the Credit Crisis of 2008 apparently isn't working.
Syriza and Podemos meanwhile had better make sure that their potion works, too. Because if Europe's history should teach us all one thing, it is that desperate voters will vote for desperate measures.