I raise a question to you though, what do you think Lenin felt when ex-Whites joined the revolutionary cause?
It’s hard to think of a successful revolution that didn’t have at least some former members of the group they were fighting against. It’s a political struggle, which means changing people’s minds. You have to have some means of letting people who change their minds into your movement, or your movement will stay perpetually small and never accomplish anything.
There’s also a major contradiction between the “all amerikkkan troops are irredeemable” thread of leftist thinking and the thread along the lines of “people who commit serious crimes can change, your brain doesn’t even fully develop until your mid 20s.” You can’t on one hand say a guy who did a violent crime at 18 and who sincerely attempts to turn his life around at 25 is reformable, then on the other hand say joining the military at 18 is some indelible sin. Either people who do bad things can change, or they can’t.
It’s hard to think of a successful revolution that didn’t have at least some former members of the group they were fighting against. It’s a political struggle, which means changing people’s minds. You have to have some means of letting people who change their minds into your movement, or your movement will stay perpetually small and never accomplish anything.
There’s also a major contradiction between the “all amerikkkan troops are irredeemable” thread of leftist thinking and the thread along the lines of “people who commit serious crimes can change, your brain doesn’t even fully develop until your mid 20s.” You can’t on one hand say a guy who did a violent crime at 18 and who sincerely attempts to turn his life around at 25 is reformable, then on the other hand say joining the military at 18 is some indelible sin. Either people who do bad things can change, or they can’t.