ARSo – It’s not a matter of being a בר פלוגתא. It’s calling out patently false views
In order to decide which views are “patently false”, you need to be within some sort of standard deviation of being a בר פלוגתא. If you open up a ראשון and see something that appears “outlandish”, do you also feel competent to declare it “patently false”? There has to be some שייכות, which no one writing here has. If Rav Shach זצ״ל would be writing here I wouldn’t be calling him out ח״ו. This is just פשוט שכל. If you follow a גדול (not just for purposes of מחלוקת, but follow for real) who happens to also not hold of Lubavitch, fine for you. That doesn’t give you the right to add your own “two cents” to this or any other מחלוקת.
ARSo – had you been around 400 years ago would you have said it is not our business to dispute (and denigrate) S”T because he was a big talmid chochom and we therefore have no שייכות to being his בר פלוגתא?
It wouldn’t have been our business. The גדולי תורה of that generation decided how to deal with him. These things aren’t the responsibility of every individual Yankel. At the time, the דעת בעלי בתים chevra were all for him, and mocked the גדולי ישראל who opposed him…
ARSo – That is SO not true! Every single Lubavicher that I have ever met over more than the last fifty years is focused on spreading the word of how great their rebbe was/is, and it really irks them if someone doesn’t believe that he was/is the tzaddik hador.
So what. In discussing the parameters of תועלת, nowhere does the חפץ חיים permit saying לשון הרע in order to “irk” someone. If it is clear that there is no possibility of convincing someone, then there is no obligation, and ממילא no היתר, of תוכחה or תועלת or anything else. Be honest. Whoever is posting these comments here is just doing it for fun. Not to “save” anyone. By the way, believing any particular person is the צדיק הדור is perfectly Kosher. You don’t have to agree, but that is a long way from בזיון.
ARSo – That’s fine when the question is merely, is someone a gadol or not. But when the question is whether the supposed-gadol has views that are dangerous and misleading, your rebbe’s rule does not apply, even according to the Chofetz Chaim.
No, not at all. To trigger a ספק דאורייתא of איסורי לשון הרע it is not at all necessary to be a גדול, only to be עמיתך, which nowadays is not much higher a bar than being Shomer Shabbos… You are also using circular reasoning. Anyone you think might be a כופר is automatically no longer protected by עמיתך, which in turn permits you to be דן לכף חוב, which establishes that he is in fact a כופר…
If you don’t like Lubavitch, maybe you like Satmar… The Divrei Yoel said that if someone is very excited about one particular Mitzvah, but not so much about other Mitzvos, he should investigate carefully where his excitement is coming from… Are all the people here so excited about “saving כלל ישראל” from “כפירה” equally excited about every other aspect of Yiddishkeit?