The particular argument that commentator is making is very familiar, and I've seen it made about Podemos and also the Five Star movement as well as Syriza. Perhaps from an altered perspective it might be applicable to Sinn Fein or the SNP as well.
His argument chooses to dwell on the problematic political content of popular 'left' parties, and to emphasise their somewhat destructive nationalist aspects, and their proximity to even worse fascist elements in their domestic politics, and contrasts these currents with a falsely benign view of European federalism.
The observation that Syriza and similar movements lack political maturity and have problem elements isn't wrong. Incidentally this is also why the KKE has refused coalition with Syriza. But 'bad ideas' aren't the root cause. The economic circumstances of Greece are the root cause. When ordinary people are struck by poverty and uncertainty, you get in-group dynamics, ethnocentrism, and cults of personality built around elites of power coming forward to some extent—ie fascism and nationalism.
Economic circumstances are understood relatively. The circumstances of Greece are interpreted by contrast to the circumstances of the rest of the EU. There have been questions raised about whether this is logical—especially by satellites of the EU that are in equal or worse shape to Greece in terms of living standards.
Greeks who regard themselves as Europeans—Christians on the edge of a former Islamic empire, I suppose—envy the relative wealth and stability of north-western Europe. Germans and French are encouraged by their own domestic narratives to view Greeks in a particular light. The structuring economic differences of Europe widen the social and political cracks in the European project through no particular fault of the individual Europeans involved.
The way the eurozone is currently set up, economically strong countries will always benefit and the weaker will always suffer. Blaming Greece is like blaming water for flowing downhill. In any normal political federation with a common currency there's centralised taxation and redistribution to soften these dynamics, the EU is stuck with jury-rigged stuff like the ERDF.
The anti-German sentiment and the nationalist sentiment in Syriza is the dual of the anti-Greek and the pro-Grexit sentiment in the rest of Europe. The extremely strong pro-European urge in Syriza is the dual of the pan-European tendency in EU politics.Â
Looking at the long term, I think things will be much better if the world has a strong and unified Europe in which the central institutions are able to assume the sort of obligation to all EU citizens that countries assume domestically. But to get there politically, the states that get a relatively raw deal in the EU, including the periphery, the PIGS countries, the new EU members, need to push, because the centre of the EU has fewer incentives to change the current arrangements.Â
