Who is exploiting anyone? Choosing to not eat meat is a dietary preference, regardless of your irrelevant use of quotation marks.

Maybe you’d make more progress if stopped calling people “brainwashed”. That’s ACTUALLY disingenuous.

anyone brings up any kind of criticism.

The criticism being “don’t do it”. My meat consumption has decreased but is not eliminated. Always defended people’s dietary preferences when vegetarians/vegans faced backlash. Not they’ve become the preachy ones.