https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/fact-check-corbynista-...
did you mean to post this on 4chan?
Chavez and, to lesser extend, Maduro, were/are, under most any definition, socialists.
What I believe makes you want to avoid the association is that naturally, some intellectually dishonest people will turn around and use a completely different definition of the word to jump from arguing against, say, rules prohibiting forced arbitration clauses (to use an appropriately arbitrary example) directly to painting the spectre of Venezuela-style breakdown of civilisation in our future.
Personally, I believe it's more use to argue against instances of the latter folly (which really deserves its own debate-ending "...fallacy" designation). Otherwise, it's that No-True-Scotsman thing.
In fairness, pretty much every state socialist regime has, fairly quickly, evolved into a totalitarian dictatorship so it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone.
It's clear that Marx was right in the sense that societies evolve, but wrong in that state socialism evolves to communism: it clearly doesn't. It's why I find intelligent people advocating for socialism to be particularly heinous. What they are, effectively, advocating for is totalitarianism.