i had a similar experience reading some anti-communist (i think) book in college, i forget the title but the primary antagonist guy was some bald guy with a scar on his head that would turn colors or writhe whenever he got mad, like the author was making fun of the scar, and this character basically resented the rural peasants for picking their noses all the time and just being generally ignorant uneducated people. like the whole point of the book was about how stupid and pointless it was to try to turn these idiot peasants into Modern Socialist Revolutionaries, but like all the reasoning and actions the ‘antagonists’ took made perfect sense to me the whole time. i forget most of the details since it was so long ago so its possible i just assumed the book was meant to be anti-communist and it was actually making some 5-d irony chess point that i would agree with if i noticed it. idk.