Halevi – you’re the first to articulate a defense for some of what we see from chabad, and i appreciate it. I can only be confirmed by emotional tirades so much before it gets boring, so thank you!
I don’t think the two ideas are unequal. If a person lived in an area where there were no computers, learned about them from a tech professional who happened to be travelling by, and wanted to share his newfound knowledge with his brethren, that is not superiority. Imagine if everyone in the town were already using computers, and he found one that he felt was a better model than what everyone else had. He undertook to teach the town how to use the model he believed to be better. But the townspeople weren’t interested, because to them, the new one wasn’t any better than the old one. Still, the townsman had a valid point, but think of an outsider who doesn’t even know what kind og computers the town is using were to come in and try to get everyone to use his type of computer. He’s assuming arrogantly that he alone knows what’s best and that it’s not possible that the town has a system that even is close to being as good as his. If he didn’t feel that way, he wouldn’t travel about from place to place trying to push his computer.
What chabad is doing is not sharing, because the other “towns” already have “computers” which they’ve been successfully using for generations. To try and get people to their ways is assuming that they don’t already have something good enough for them.
Re, moshiach; if someone privately thinks that their rebbe was a candidate for moshiach, that wouldn’t bother me. But they should understand that their rebbe is one among many others. The world doesn’t revolve around them, and in terms of influence among orthodox jews, the lubavitcher rebbe was not in the top 3 of post-war influential figures. Not by a long shot. The effects of rav moshe, rav aharon, the satmar rov, and others were far greater among the already religious.