Scholar, Author, Thought Leader

“Onishi argues that conservative Protestants and Catholics, along with technology leaders, share interests in promoting a strong authoritarian figure to lead the United States…A fascinating analysis of key philosophies on the American right.”
—Library Journal

“From church pews to Silicon Valley, Bradley Onishi takes the reader on an essential journey through the seemingly disparate threads of the radical right, a movement exploiting its vast financial and information resources to manipulate Americans into believing their freedoms would be better served by a monarch than by the American experiment that explicitly rejected one. With vivid portraits of a terrifying and downright weird cast of characters, American Caesar deftly unpacks a extremist insurgency taking aim at the heart of American democracy.”
—Sarah Posner, author of Unholy: How White Christian Nationalists Powered the Trump Presidency and the Devastating Legacy They Left Behind

Dr. Bradley B. Onishi is the award-winning author of Preparing for War. He founded the Straight White American Jesus podcast, Axis Mundi Media, and the Institute for Religion, Media, and Civic Engagement. Onishi is a Research Associate at the U.C. Berkeley Center for Religion and a member of the Committee on Public Understanding at the American Academy of Religion. He often writes for outlets like Rolling Stone, Politico, and the New York Times, and appears regularly on MSNnow.

Onishi is also the co-host of the Straight White American Jesus (SWAJ) podcast, which has been downloaded over 15 million times. He founded Axis Mundi Media in 2023 in order to provide a platform for research-based podcasts focused on safeguarding democracy from the threats of extremism and authoritarianism.