Will they care? Plenty of people got "cancelled" because of something they did/said/did not/did not say years ago. Imho, the actions aren't the reason they get attacked, they are the tool for the attack, so retracting them might make the attack weaker, but it won't make the attackers back down.
It's either a tribal thing ("I can hurt the other tribe if I hurt that individual because they are part of the other tribe") or purity signalling ("Look, I am clean and virtuous, and I purge even our circle from the unclean").
The tribal thing is somewhat reasonable from a collective stand point (which is why groups tend to look at their members' differently than the actions of competing groups), the purity spiralling is counter-productive in the larger conflict, as you're hurting your own group, but individuals have individual interests as well, and to advance those, they may be happy to sacrifice allies.
It's either a tribal thing ("I can hurt the other tribe if I hurt that individual because they are part of the other tribe") or purity signalling ("Look, I am clean and virtuous, and I purge even our circle from the unclean").
The tribal thing is somewhat reasonable from a collective stand point (which is why groups tend to look at their members' differently than the actions of competing groups), the purity spiralling is counter-productive in the larger conflict, as you're hurting your own group, but individuals have individual interests as well, and to advance those, they may be happy to sacrifice allies.