There’s an important post by CS a bit back that no one commented on, but I think is very important.
I’ll quote it to remind people:
“In a famous sicha 5751 the Rebbe got very emotional and poured out his heart, which was highly unusual.
He said that he had done everything to bring moshiach, and that klal yisroel as a whole, throughout the genesis,had accumulated enough zechusim to me r it moshiach so what more could Hashem be waiting for!?!
He continued that it must be that Hashem doesn’t want the Nossi hador to bring moshiach because he wants moshiach. Rather, it needs to matter to every man woman and child.
Ave then shockingly the Rebbe concluded that he’s giving it all over to us regular people-is up to us to bring moshiach.”
To me, this means that the Rebbe realized that the Massiach campaign went off track, people got carried away and started focusing too much on the Rebbe. So he backed off, had the stroke soon after, and eventually was niftar. It sounds like he abdicated being the “Nasi HaDor”. And he expected his Chassidim to back off too, but their actions indicated that they did not.
If they had listened to what the Rebbe actually wanted, and not what they wanted to hear, things would be very different today and Chabad would not be so different from everyone else.