Menachem:
I hear your point, but the tone still comes off as defensive when you say “so what?” (albeit understandably so). The issue that people keep driving at is that if you really have such a problem with these sub-groups, why are you so unwilling to directly criticize them? You saw on this thread how willing Avram and I were to criticize another Yeshivish person who was claiming that elitism is okay. The view on various Chabad sub-groups does not seem to include any disapproval. What seems to be the mainstream approach would be to say “we believe moshiach can come from the dead, others believe the Rebbe is literally still alive in the flesh and can never die; both are legitimate shittos in Chabad.” Am I wrong about this?
“I responded that no one denies that there are many Lubavitchers with these beliefs that you mentioned.”
I would challenge this. There’s very clearly a concentrated effort to hide Chabad’s beliefs about the Rebbe from the masses. The topic is meticulously censored from Chabad dot org, shluchim clearly have a policy of staying away from it, etc. Maybe it’s not so much “denying” the beliefs so much as concealing.
Avram:
“if indeed the mainstream majority of Chabad thinks these “crazies” are wrong, and even falling into avoda zara”
The simplest explanation is that they don’t hold it’s wrong and certainly don’t hold it’s avoda zara. They’re just embarrassed at how flashy some people are with it.
As far as the Rebbe picture thing, part of my point was that Yserbius could have just seen it in a Chabadnik davening in the living room situation. I felt it was necessary to mention the practice of putting a picture of him on every wall, otherwise it sounded like he was accusing them of putting it davka on the eastern wall.