Left-wing horror author Stephen King fell for a Russian prankster posing as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky who hooked him into praising Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.
Speaking with a man who sounds nothing like Zelensky, King, a frequent critic of conservatives and all-around Trump hater, found himself roped into a discussion about Nazi sympathizers in Ukraine like the Azov battalion and the country’s admiration for Stepan Bandera, who infamously collaborated with the Nazis during WWII and helped in the extermination of Jews in Ukraine.
“Of course, they love people like Bandera, our national hero,” the prankster said of his country to King.
“So what do you think about Bandera? He was in the Second World War and he fought against the Soviet Union, but he had some crimes, but it’s not so big crimes. Crimes against Jews, but you know it’s really important to keep him opposed to Putin and his propaganda.”
File/The grave of Ukrainian leader Stepan Bandera at the Waldfriedhof cemetery in Munich, Germany, 07 March 2014. The grave serves as a monument for the Ukrainian diaspora in Munich. (Rene Ruprecht/picture alliance via Getty Images)
King then compared Bandera’s Nazi collaboration to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owning slaves to drive the analogy that great men can sometimes do bad things.
“You can always find things about people to pull them down. Washington and Jefferson were slave owners,” said King. “That doesn’t mean they didn’t many good things for the United States of America. There are always people who have flaws, we’re human.”
Stephen King then hailed Bandera as a “great man.”
“There are things that we do that are bad choices and then there are things that we do that are great choices,” he said. “So, on the whole, I think Bandera is a great man and you’re a great man, and Viva Ukraine.”
As noted by the History News Network, Bandera was “an uncompromising leader of the militant, terrorist branch of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN)” and became “a Nazi collaborator who lived with his deputies under German protection after World War II began.”
“Whatever their disappointment with the Germans, the Banderists never disagreed with their Jewish policy in Ukraine, which eventually killed over 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews,” the outlet said.
King’s misstep with the prankster comes after he raged on Twitter against conservatives following the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
Stephen King has issued no statement in response to the prank call.
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