@neville
You actually have impressed me with this discussion so I’m gonna take you seriously and respond.
“So, in what mesorah is this stuff OK? Sphard? Teimani? Ashkenaz?”
All the above. Someone mentioned similar stuff by the baba sali, and there were two litvishe sources quoted that area saying the same idea.
“Do you get the crux of the argument here? Chabad is an invented mesoret. Lubavitchers all have ancestors that were Ashkenazim or Sphardim, etc. If we accept your principle, what’s to stop me from making up “Minhag Neville” that says it’s OK to worship me as a god? How are you going to argue with me? It’s my minhag! It goes all the way back to the beginning of the Neville movement!”
Im sorry you feel that way. First of all the Rebbeim never declared anything about themselves but about a previous Rebbe.
Second of all in order to establish Minhag Neville, you would have to be accepted by existing gedolim as a real gadol, and be chosen by chassidim as their Rebbe. In lubavitch specifically, our Rebbeim were chosen by chassidim only, sometimes against the wishes of the family members. Our Rebbeim often fought against becoming Rebbe and weren’t seeking to establish their nesius at all.
The lubavitch movement btw goes back to the Alter Rebbe who was accepted as a Gaon beyond. He wrote the shulchan aruch HaRav. Many of the Geonim who had fought him bitterly, become his chassidim.
This post read as absurd to me but I took the time to respond seriously because it looks like you are sincere.