> For a site like Gab, I always wondered if having a massive amount of users posting messages making fun of the alt right movement, painting neo nazies like the idiots they are and criticizing the site user base wouldn't have been a better way than outright censorship.

No, both are the wrong approach, in my opinion.

If you "deplatform" and censor nazis, then all you do is fuel their victimhood which will only enforce their believes, and worse, people on the brink of sympathizing with them will see them as the victims and underdogs too, pushing those people further in their direction.

Now, if you just ridicule the nazis just for the sake of it, you essentially achieve the same result: nazis can again declare themselves the victims.

What you got to do is debunk their falsehoods, outline their hypocrisies, highlight the stuff they do not want the general public (especially those people who are on the brink of joining their "movement") to know. Of course, humor and satire and even ridicule are very potent ways to then get your information across, but you have to actually say something/show something with it. You probably won't influence them, they already made up their minds and run their cognitive dissonance in overdrive, but putting this information out there, especially in entertaining way, denying them plain victimhood, showing how they are the bullies and denying them the prerogative of interpretation (they often have because we're too lazy to actually argue against them and resort to idle insults instead) is what can and does make "undecided" people think twice before joining their movement.

I saw that with Hilary and her "basket of deplorables". This kind of insult and ridicule drove quite a few undecided people right into the arms of Trump. I believe this is actually the single event that won Trump his presidency (it just just my belief based on what I saw, not something I claim is a verified fact). The Rust Belters who secured his success didn't give much fucks about email servers, "BENGHAZI!!!" or the Russian trolls claiming Hilary's people run a pedo ring in a pizza shop, but they did mind being called "deplorable" because they were concerned about their blue collar jobs in the context of immigration and globalization. This is further evidenced by Trump's targeted (facebook) ads hitting on those topics and how Hilary is a "stooge" for the globalists and Goldman Sachs ("Crooked Hilary", "drain the swamp").

I can see that a lot with the AfD party in Germany, which isn't exactly alt-right, but sure has a lot of alt-right members, including some rather prominent ones like "Bernd" Höcke, and uses quite a bit of alt-right/identitarian/ethno-centrism/"supremacy" ideology as well (they also e.g. deny climate change, think women belong in the kitchen, really do not like homosexuals - even tho one of ther party co-chairs is openly lesbian, but all this is rarely talked about).

They have a tendency to portrait themselves as the victimized underdog, and it works, works extremely well.

Even works with me sometimes, subconsciously at least, and I despise them politically and ideologically, and find most their policies outright abhorrent.

Every time I see stories about antifa attacking AfD events or AfD people, I sympathize with them for being the victims of violence.

Every time the other parties fuck with them not on merits but just to fuck with them, like in a recent state election when the election commission tried to reject the vast majority of their candidates on a technicality, I fear for democracy and I sympathize with them to a degree.

Every time I read a comment saying something like "every nazi/AfD/alt-right/white supremacist is a cunt" or even "...has to die" or "out to collect some nazi scalps", I sympathize a little with them, because they are people after all (with some very vile idea, misguided and indoctrinated, but still), as I find this kind of violence and dehumanizing rhetoric very problematic, same as as I find the way they usually try to dehumanize other people or are openly violent evil and disgusting.

However, when I see satire and cabaretists make fun of them, not just because, but outlining the evils hit they say and do and debunking the falsehoods they spew, that's something that resonates with me, and not just me.

In Germany, you got a slew of programs and prominent comedians that do that, from heute show, extra 3 and Die Anstalt, over to Böhmermann and Sonneborn.

The US has quite a few of those, too, like Real Time, Last Week Tonight, The Daily Show (that I know of and regularly consume), but comparing both countries styles, I find the US stuff often lacking in substance underneath, going just for cheap shots, unrelated jokes and outraged rhetoric instead, in particular when it comes to John Oliver (tho he has his moments, too)