Unlike you, I do not attribute a singularly and overtly sinister motive to the Watchtower's policies.
What could be more sinister than creating an army of mind control drones to do your bidding?
I think it acts out of a need to control its "flock"from conveniently-defined spiritual corruption.
This would be true if they ever had a coherent theology. They owe their existence to the Catholic church who abused their members so bad that the Watchtower had an opportunity to steal acolytes. Instead of telling the truth, however, they just copied the policies of the failed churches of the day with their own tweaks. They created elaborate biblical fabrications and used them to assume power over thousands of then vulnerable minds. Then the people they duped had children who's minds were ready to to be infiltrated. The organization has always been about money and power, nothing else. Such an endeavor doesn't really sell well so a pitch was developed and maintained over the years.
Its methods and its policies stink to high heaven - but its motives are consistent with the purge-the-evil-influence mentality of the Old Testament, minus the resort to overt physical violence.
By teaching that the OT is anything other than a collection of ancient laws and myths is a disservice to the texts. Do you think the characters in the book are bona fide historical figures? They work much better as allegorical constructs based off real people who lived in history. The Watchtower perverts Scripture for their own means, they don't follow it.
In my view, the Watchtower is no different than a number of other religions and cults.
This is exactly the position the Watchtower takes. They tell their members that any group can be considered a cult which effectively minimizes internal doubts. People in cults don't deny that cults exist, but they believe that they have somehow evaded their influence. They want to feel good about themselves and the life choices they have made. To put religion and cults into a single pot as you are dong is a service to the Watchtower. As it means they are simply employing accepted contemporary methods which do not affect one's free will. This creates a ripe population of unsuspecting victims.
Let's also not absolve those old "Holy Books" of some unfortunate influence and responsbility for their often violent and hateful messages that their "God" directed against any who were not obedient.
Save the Quran those holy books are thousands of years old. You might as well consider them written on a different planet with a different species. The Watchtower on the other hand is a relatively new religion and have a modern standard to uphold. To which they ignore and result in an archaic religion that is far worse off than any ancient religion altered with contemporary ideals. Take the Catholic church and Mormonism for instance. They are built off the frameworks of bloodthirsty religions from the past, but slowly they have been reforming. The Watchtower has never changed anything about the fundamental structure of total control over their adherents. In fact they have gotten much worse and more cultish as time goes on.
Perhaps inadvertently, you tend to paint these as worthier (?) than the Watchtower; they were not; in fact they were often blatantly worse. The genocidal passages in the OLd Testament are stark testimony to the brutal religiosity at work in the people of pre-Christian ages and that continued throughout many of the centuries post-Christianity. It does not absolve the Watchtower at all - but it does show that, both in the past and the present, the Watchtower "enjoys" a lot of company from other exclusivist groups.
With all due respect if you believe the Watchtower is anything but a safe haven for the criminally insane you are deluding yourself. There is a difference between a group of people who gather around a coherent theology, and criminals using religion to enable their criminal activities. Consider the difference between how the Mormon church approached the internet as compared to the Watchtower. The Mormon's used internet advertising to show that their members are worked into society. They showed that there are Mormon first responders, police officers, public officials and every other walk of life you could think of. The Watchtower on the other hand have an army of grunt workers and dispatched what is called "social network campaigns" to the internet where their agents enter communities critical of their doctrine and policies posing to be something they are not. They build respect from the community with alteriour motives of sowing discord among the community. There have been many agents in and out of this very website, even. Both outfits are cults, but one is trying to genuinely integrate with the changing media of the world and one is desperately fighting against it.
You really need to take some time and get a firm mental grasp on the science of mind control. You would do well to see how outfits like the Watchtower and Scientology expertly employ the tactics to create empires who actually have sway in the global picture. If anything, the 20th century showed us that humanity can be decieved.
-Sab