It was April Fool’s Day ’24 and the news might have sounded to many like a joke. The leader of an armed coup against democracy had been sentenced to a mere five years of the mildest possible type of detention. Judges sympathetic to the defendant had ensured that justice was not served.

That trial was in Germany in 1924 and the defendant was Adolf Hitler. The coup was the failed Munich Putsch by the Nazis in November 1923. Hitler was actually freed in eight months, having used the time partly to author Mein Kampf. A few years later, in 1933, Hitler was made Chancellor of Germany by politicians who thought he could be controlled and he then held an election rife with voter intimidation where the Nazis got less than a third of the votes. But within months he had quickly engineered the creation of a superficially legal dictatorship by intimidating the legislature with disinformation on those the Nazis termed enemies of the state.

In 2024, the American republic faces challenges that are no less fundamental than those faced by the Weimar republic in Germany a hundred years ago. A common explanation given for the collapse of the Weimar republic under the onslaught of the Nazis is that it was still in its infancy and its institutions were weak. But Americans have seen over the last eight years that even centuries-old institutions can be steadily eroded by determined authoritarians aided by hate, disinformation and misinformation, all amplified by twenty-first century technology.

Over the more than eight decades of its existence, the AHA has unfortunately had to become very familiar with fighting battles around the separation of religion and government. In the coming years the battles we fight may extend to standing up to Christian nationalist authoritarians at the state and federal level who idolize proto-dictators like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and who will not hesitate to abuse their power to attack the very existence of organizations, like the AHA, that they see as a threat to their Christian nationalist utopia. But the AHA will be here to stand and fight as it always has been.

Continuing the fight is indeed what the AHA has been doing in 2023. The work of the AHA in making our elected leaders aware of the concerns of humanists continued strongly with the Congressional Freethought Caucus growing by a third to twenty members in 2023. Our longstanding legal efforts to protect the rights of nonbelievers continued in states like Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma with a highlight being the case in Oklahoma where a settlement ensures that a school district that was actually allowing missionaries to proselytize to a captive audience of small children will no longer be able to continue that practice. Our efforts at community and education, which are some of the most important in growing the organization, continued apace with many events, including one each month where we explored one commitment from the Ten Commitments with an online speaker, followed by a discussion with parents, caregivers, and community leaders. For the first time since the pandemic, we came together for an in-person annual conference in Denver with thought-provoking discussions on many topics including science denial and fighting Christian nationalism.

The most important thing any of us can do in the fight against Christian nationalist authoritarianism in 2024 is to increase voter turnout. If authoritarianism were to become successful in the American republic in the coming years, one of the biggest reasons would be voter apathy. Misinformation and disinformation have led many, especially among younger voters, to dismiss all choices as equally bad. I hope you do your best to make sure that such misplaced indifference is overcome and there is high turnout in the defense of our democracy against Christian nationalists. And never forget to show every day that a humanist would rather be good than godly any day.

-Sunil Panikkath, Former AHA President