People gather outside a courthouse after a gunman opened fire leaving several people wounded in Athens, Tuesday. [AP]
Tuesday’s incident involving an 89-year-old man who is believed to have shot and injured five people in two separate attacks at a central Athens courthouse and a social security office has once again exposed the country’s profound lack of a safety culture.
Anyone who has ever entered a courtroom knows that metal detectors are often treated as a formality – either ignored by the uninformed or by the “Boy Scouts” who still respect rules that few others follow. Most people either disregard them entirely or treat them as if they were pieces of public art, glancing at them before casually walking around them, usually from the side.
The problem has no simple solution and is certainly not one that can be addressed by a single minister or official. It reflects a deeply ingrained mindset that permeates society and, with few exceptions, the very core of the state itself.
Young police officers stationed outside sensitive sites are often seen absorbed in their mobile phones, raising doubts about whether they would be able to accurately report events if, God forbid, an incident were to occur.
The broader issue is that we live in an era in which extremism and irrationality are increasingly pervasive. Any unstable or radical individual can easily be influenced by online misinformation or extremist narratives, or even by incidents such as the recent attempt by a man to breach the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in an apparent plot against Donald Trump or a government official.
In a time when such events have become routine, it should come as no surprise if copycat incidents emerge elsewhere as well.
But the threat is not limited to the mentally disturbed. We are operating in a volatile region, and current trends are likely to foster a new generation of extremists who aspire to target Western interests.
Greece once enjoyed an unlikely status of immunity, but those days are now firmly in the past.
Mindsets are shaped over many years and, unfortunately, take just as long to change. One can only hope that it will not take a major shock to bring about that change.