“There was a Rebbe (Skulener) who just passed away, who had a massive levaya, who lived with tznius, without a massive PR machine.”
Skulen didn’t have so much adversity that there were scads of websites dedicated to bashing on them (I’m not referring to this site, there are/were specific anti-Chabad sites out there). Also, they weren’t in kiruv; Part of Chabad’s PR is about misconceptions about Orthodoxy b’klal, not just Chabad. Chabad should be able to defend itself against hate. I don’t deny them that. What I deny is that all criticism coming against Chabad, even halachic criticism from frum yidden is sinas chinom. The sinas chinam against Chabad is mostly coming from frei or Modern folks.
Lit, you don’t really think ALL the criticism of Chabad is valid, right? What people are saying here mostly is, but there’s a big, mean world out there that they have to deal with a lot more than we do.