In political discourse, this would be the equivalent of minutely minority alt far-right politics being talked about as if it was mainstream, and being inserted into Wikipedia as though it was another rational argument.
Is that "neutrality"? Seriously?
That's my point: some "fringe" ideas are covered extensively (because if Marxist theory is anything, it's fringe, to say nothing of details like the dictatorship of the proletariat), in situations where people obviously weren't asking for those ideas, with criticism suppressed or at least moved very deeply away. Don't you think it would be at least worth a mention on socialism's page that it has "once or twice" led to repression and dictatorship, not of the proletariat, but of billionnaires, religious lunatics, and worse? (oh right, leftists won't even participate in discussions of the fact that leftist "heroes" like Chavez and even Maduro are billionnaires[1]). And, what exactly is the problem with at least mentioning the viewpoint that what happened in Gaza isn't a genocide? That is not a fringe idea at all.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/moderatepolitics/comments/anenmt/th...
> Presently, there are five communist states in the world: China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea and Vietnam.
> if Marxist theory is anything, it's fringe
It has shaped the history of the world, for good or bad, and is still one of the most mainstream theories on how modern societies organize. “Fringe” refers to the recognition something has in the world, not the number of “supporters” (not to mention just suggesting that is a misunderstanding of what Marxism is).
You seem to have bought into several fringe theories. There is little evidence of Maduro being a billionaire other than pieces from US magazines. You can certainly hold that view, but not demand that it be featured equally alongside what is publicly verifiable knowledge.
When searching for socialist dictatorships, the relevant bit of information is that the application of Marxist theory in practice—especially in the 20th and 21st centuries—has always resulted in authoritarian rule, human rights abuses, and repression and economic hardship for hundreds of millions. And yes, Venezuela and Iran are examples of that. Every. Single. Time. Communism, Marxism, ... never resulted in the magical la-la-land that keeps getting promised. Not once. With irrelevant exceptions, like ironically Israel, whose parliament peacefully chose to abandon communism rather than repress the population into total misery.
The question was why Wikipedia needs to hide the examples of total socialist failures and instead pushes TINY details of Marxist theory. "Socialist dictatorship" obviously also refers to the many countries where socialism has resulted in repression, hardship and failure rather than justice, and hiding that is obviously not neutral.
Similar to the Gaza genocide page. One viewpoint, anything but neutral, is pushed to the total exclusion of the obvious alternate viewpoints. Even the extreme viewpoint on the other side has merit: that what Hamas is doing is at the very least attempted genocide (that is nothing new for Hamas: they have in the past successfully committed genocide against other Palestinian factions, the very definition of genocide, more than once. Plus, of course, that a terrorist organization that has mass-murder as an explicit goal in their charter is obviously not very concerned with human rights), and what Israel is successfully doing is not genocide. But that shall not be discussed (read the talk page).
Is that neutrality?
It's also extremely obvious that Wikipedia's bias is first and foremost about extreme leftist propaganda (extreme meaning viewpoints that even regular leftists would take offense to), not about Gaza. Take the icons of communism, you see the same. Leon Trotsky is obviously first and foremost a mass-murderer. That's what we call a military commander who had hundreds of people's bones broken and then thrown into the sea, who locks a school with children inside and burns it to the ground, no matter how "bourgeois" those children were (not that the children were very bourgeois at all). And yes, the other side also did bad things. But it is entirely left out. Why? This is not some tiny detail. All that is discussed are very fine details of different branches of communism. Or take the actions of prominent leftist states against immigration, violent anti-religionism or anti-LGBT socialist violence is silenced (illustrating that there have been huge swings in socialist thought). Or the fact that socialism was, and is, very much opposed to science (and I don't just mean Lysenkoism or North Korea's pine needle tea against famine). Yet all these were, and are, part of all big communist states. Soviets did that. China did (and does) that. North Korea does that. Even Cuba gives it a try now and then.
You seem to look at everything slightly related to socialism/communism under the same lens and expect to see your worldview reflected in Wikipedia, that is the opposite of neutrality. In fact you’re enacting a perfect example of item #3 in the original post, the “balance” argument.
I do find the way you casually cast shade by association on students and socialists at the same time to be interesting. Are they all the same to you?
That's because there's an entirely different page that outlines the war in Gaza and Israel's justification: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaza_war#Initial_Israeli_count...
> For some reason the word "dictator" is not mentioned here
You're looking in the wrong place again. Maduro's article names him a dictator (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicol%C3%A1s_Maduro, third paragraph). Chavez's doesn't go that far, but it does state the dictatorial claims of his political opponents in a few locations (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Ch%C3%A1vez#%22Socialism_...).
> Did you know Iran never had any socialists or students in their ayatollah-dictatorship revolution?
"However, as ideological tensions persisted between Pahlavi and Khomeini, anti-government demonstrations began in October 1977, developing into a campaign of civil resistance that included communism, socialism, and Islamism."
A search for "iranian revolution" on this page will return many results: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism_in_Iran
> you will still find these facts if you dig into the detail pages on wikipedia
Yes, that's called "research"...
> the current leader of the UN, in his youth as a violent communist, used violence against LGBT protestors, or that he beat a few of his own students into the hospital
This sounds like a conspiracy theory, and I couldn't find any reference to those events anywhere online. Even the incredibly biased socialist/communist prolewiki doesn't name him as a communist: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Ant%C3%B3nio_Guterres
> Did you know that North Korea is not communist? It is a "a highly centralized, one-party totalitarian dictatorship"
That's correct, the state ideology of north korea is "juche", which has it's roots in marxism/communism but splintered decades ago, with a focus on nationalism, historical revisionism and reverence for the leader(s). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juche)
> Same for "socialist dictatorship", where you will only find explanations of Marxist theory, not the many disasters, some of which mentioned above.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authoritarian_socialism#Develo...