Why is Oliver Stone attracted to ruthless dictators? Could he have accumulated his estimated $50 million net worth under socialist rule? And who will go down as Stone’s biggest crush, Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro?

Those are the questions Daily Surge sought answers to when our camera rolled up on Stone in Washington, D.C. recently after a screening of his Showtime series, “Oliver Stone’s Untold History of the United States.”

The infamous director of “JFK” and “Natural Born Killers” has made it no secret that he admires some of the most reprehensible people to hold power over the last 100 years. To wit, he called Hugo Chavez a “great hero” after the socialist thug finally died. This was the same Chavez whose regime in Venezuela was routinely criticized for its censorship practices, including penalizing media outlets for offending government officials and imprisoning political dissidents who publicly condemned Chavez’s brutality.

Then there’s Fidel Castro, Cuba’s longtime socialist dictator whose résumé includes a panoply of authoritarianism — abridging free press, arbitrary arrests, political oppression, starving his own people, firing squads, and rationing food. But after interviewing the Cuban leader, Stone praised Castro’s “inner strength” and gushed over the despot’s — wait for it — “morality.”

Stone’s most despicable attraction, however, is reserved for the mass-murdering Soviet monster Joseph Stalin. While promoting his revisionist documentary to television critics, Stone expressed “empathy” for the communist leader and said he produced the Showtime series to, as the title states, provide Americans with the “untold” story of 20th century history.

“I’ve been able to walk in Stalin’s shoes…to understand [his] point of view,” Stone boasted.

Stalin’s brutal reign of terror, which included manufactured famines and forced labor camps, resulted in the deaths of at least 20 million people, although that number could be as high as 60 million.

Video courtesy of Gabriella Morrongiello