Eleven years after the 2015 crisis, Alexis Tsipras is attempting to craft the image of a political “Reaper” — a mature player returning to “clean up” the landscape. But history has a ruthless memory, and the second episode of the documentary “By a Hair” (Sto Chiliosto, SKAI) served as a harsh reminder: before Tsipras styled himself as a Reaper, he was the leader who — despite the sympathy he enjoyed — endured one slap after another from Jean-Claude Juncker, whose cynical remarks abruptly grounded the then-prime minister over the “suffocation” that civil servants at the State General Accounting Office had warned about from the very first moment of the “first-time Left” government.

The Blunt “No” from Jean-Claude

But the humiliation did not stop there. The documentary reveals that while Athens was “flirting” with Moscow, Vladimir Putin contacted Juncker regarding the Greek issue. The Luxembourg politician’s answer was a blunt “no,” making it clear to the Russian leader that Greece was a European matter and crushing any hopes in the Maximos Mansion for a “Russian lifeline.”

Besides, it later became evident that Moscow had no intention of inflating such a lifeline with its rubles. At the same time, Europe was allegedly demanding the Acropolis as collateral, with Juncker delivering the famous “Shut up!” in order to save the Parthenon from the amateurism of a leadership that thought it was playing chess, while Thomas Wieser was already “pulling the plug” with the blessing of Wolfgang Schäuble.

Abandonment and SOS Signals

All this was happening while, according to testimonies, complete confusion prevailed within the government itself. On one side, Yanis Varoufakis believed he could threaten Europe with “Marxist dances” in order to secure loans without conditions, while on the other, Panagiotis Lafazanis now describes the situation as a diplomatic disaster: “The case was heading for shipwreck.”

“Tsipras signed an extension without securing a loan. We were scraping the bottom of the state coffers to pay installments,” he admits, revealing that the so-called “proud negotiation” was in reality a desperate effort to stop the country from defaulting the very next day.

At the same time, Stavroula Milakou (Director General of the Budget Office) confirmed the chaos: “There was no understanding of the problem by my political superiors.” Dimitris Mardas’s infamous spreadsheet showing bankruptcy by Clean Monday became the blackboard of a government spiraling into delusion.

Contempt

International disdain was cemented in Washington and Frankfurt. Jack Lew and Daleep Singh from the U.S. Treasury reportedly watched in alarm as Greece displayed a complete lack of strategy, with Singh admitting he had been sent to Athens because “there was no credibility.” Washington, despite wanting to help save Greece, would not allow the Greek government to use the U.S. as a bargaining chip.

Tsipras’s undermining of Varoufakis through a secret phone call to Mario Draghi was portrayed as the desperate move of a prime minister watching chaos approach, while Jeroen Dijsselbloem dismissively remarked during the now-infamous Eurogroup meetings that the Greek side “didn’t even know how the system works.”

The “Party”

It is striking that Alexis Tsipras, in his attempt to reinvent himself as an unshaken “Reaper,” has chosen complete silence. On Twitter, the hashtag connected to the SKAI program reflects a wave of dozens — even hundreds — of reposts questioning whether today’s “Reaper” has the courage to answer the testimonies of his own associates about “scraping the bottom of the barrel” and “Marxist dances” above the abyss.

The Reaper may harvest the present, but history has already harvested the illusions of 2015.