As the cost of the establishment‘s austerity deepens, the polarisation between left and right is portrayed in much of the media as the rise of „extremes“. But it‘s both absurd and repugnant to equate racist or xenophobic nationalists, which have kept supposedly centrist governments in power from Denmark to Italy, with leftist parties rooted in social movements that stand for a progressive political and economic alternative.

Nor is there anything „extreme“ about an organisation such as Syriza that rejects a programme of social and economic destruction which is in every sense extreme – and calls for negotiation.