Tyrone Johns , a six-year veteran of the museum 's security staff who , according to museum director Sara Bloomfield , `` died heroically in the line of duty . '' The alleged assailant is James von Brunn , a Holocaust denier who created an anti-Semitic Web site . The 88-year-old often challenged the authenticity of `` The Diary of Anne Frank , '' the book about a teenage girl living in Amsterdam during the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands . So it was probably no coincidence that the shooting occurred on the same day the museum had scheduled a play based on a fictional meeting between Anne Frank and Emmett Till , a martyr of the civil rights movement . Von Brunn also had longstanding ties to white supremacist groups , according to authorities . These outfits flourish in bad times because they give underperformers something really valuable : convenient scapegoats for their troubles , failures and shortcomings . Without that , these misfits might actually have to look in the mirror and take responsibility for their own lives . Although these groups are properly categorized as `` hate groups '' by organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law
Editor 's note : Ruben Navarrette Jr. is a member of the San Diego Union-Tribune editorial board and a nationally syndicated columnist . Read his column here . Ruben Navarrette says hate crimes should be punished severely because they 're aimed at society as a whole . SAN DIEGO , California -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- To think there are some people who still argue that the law should n't categorize some offenses as hate crimes and allow for enhanced criminal penalties . They claim that all sorts of crimes are motivated by hate , and to separate some from others elevates some victims over others and amounts to the state policing thoughts and feelings . They also fear that politicians and institutions are simply yielding to political correctness , liberal pressure groups and identity politics . My view is that hate crimes deserve special punishment because they do n't just victimize whoever they 're aimed at ; they 're intended to send a message , and they terrorize the whole society . That debate might have been settled Wednesday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum , where hate was on display . A shooting left one man dead : Stephen