Yes.. merely was he unmasking a heretic to the Dear Leader.
Sarcasm, irony - all fail in a sea of nebbishes, thriving on the slop. (And many go {ugh} on seeing that pigs Love eating human excrement! - See? That fails too.)
It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit, and hatred. The purpose of religion, one might say, is to give an air of respectibility to these passions. -- Bertrand Russell