Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, who is on a state visit to the White House this week, is one of the most significant far-right leaders in the world. His persecution of religious minorities has troubled even the US State Department, which has taken note of the problem in its annual Religious Freedom Report. His administration has passed discriminatory laws against Muslims that have helped lead to a horrifying rise in violence against Muslims in India. Modi has also jailed journalists and activists and attempted to use the judicial system to suppress a BBC documentary critical of him. He was denied a US visa for years because of his role in a 2002 anti-Muslim riot in which more than a thousand people, mostly Muslims, were slaughtered.

If this sort of fascistic politics has a home in the United States, most people would assume it would be in Donald Trump’s Republican Party. Yet Joe Biden and the Democrats are laying out the red carpet for Modi this week.

Modi doesn’t eat meat, so Jill Biden had a chef from California prepare millet and stuffed mushrooms for a Thursday state dinner of four hundred guests, including a saffron risotto and a strawberry shortcake infused with rose and cardamom, a menu the first lady described as “stunning.”