Recent hate crimes by older white men are an anomaly, according to a research expert who says that younger generations are more likely to commit domestic terrorism.

The man who murdered a security guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., James Wenneker von Brunn, maintained a racist Web site and self-published an anti-Semitic book called “Kill the Best Gentiles.” He was 87. Scott Roeder, the man who allegedly murdered abortion doctor George Tiller in Wichita, Kan, was 51.

However, trends suggest increasingly hate crimes are committed by young people, according to Heidi Beirich, director of research at the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC tracks and researches hate groups concentrated in the United States.

“One way kids could get supremacist views is through having incredibly racist parents who pass these ideas onto their kids,” said Beirich.

“What also happens is that kids join skinhead groups for the same reasons that people join gangs: because they want to belong. They could be latchkey kids where the parents aren’t home, they could come from a broken home or an area where there is a lot of crime, and a white supremacist group could seem appealing. Although it’s an atmosphere with a violent message, some find family and a sense of purpose there.”

American youth have been implicated in violence and blind hatred numerous times. In 1998, two 22-year-olds in Laramie, Wyo., murdered 21-year-old Matthew Shepard because he was homosexual. In October, two white supremacists, aged 18 and 20, plotted to kill then-candidate Barack Obama and 88 black schoolchildren before authorities discovered their intentions and arrested them.

Yet school shootings, such as at Columbine and Virginia Tech, were committed by kids who were angry without any deep-rooted prejudiced ideology, which Beirich said is fairly common.

“The FBI admits that its database on hate crimes is inadequate,” she said. “But only about 10 percent of hate crimes are committed each year by people directly involved in supremacist groups.”

Pinpointing flashpoint issues that inspire intolerance like gay rights and abortion, New York Times opinion columnist David Brooks wrote that despite Tiller’s murder, there are fewer culture warriors in America and most people want order and peace.

“Some people on both sides seem to feel that their view of the world has been affirmed by the atrocities of a certain set of extremists, and so seem to feel a sense of vindication from these crimes,” wrote Brooks.

“Most people of course don’t see even these issues through an ideological lens…They are aware that they live their lives amid a web of relationships, which they treasure. They seek to preserve the sense of civic order that gives security to their lives — not some abstract thing called community, but the specific community they inhabit.”

Each community in America, from urban Manhattan to rural Wichita, Kan., has families with different values, but schools in all fifty states teach the history of segregation and the Holocaust. While the election of President Obama is a sign of change, Beirich said that a fear of change among others accompanies this trend.

“With each generation you see younger people becoming more tolerant, but you also see supremacist groups becoming more desperate,” she said. “As they have trouble recruiting they see themselves getting farther away from the mainstream. So while you have this trend of increasing progress, there is this backlash that accompanies it.”

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