It's not quite that simple; it's not zero-sum. Whacking one mole breaks up recruitment and kills momentum. People on the fringes lose interest and don't bother to find out where the core moved to.
When the next mole comes up it's smaller and more divided, so you whack that one, and again, smaller, more peripheral, less momentum. That gives people who have peeled off a chance to get re-integrated into more sane communities rather than being bathed in constant toxicity, so they crawl back from radicalisation. At least, that's how it works below a certain size, and is why it's worth doing these things early, before they get to the_donald sort of numbers.
And ridicule doesn't work, clearly. Vanity may work for less-devoted people, but when you live in a deeply red state and are surrounded by Trumpers, there's no way you're going to speak up IRL, or break through the power of numbers in that social sphere.
There's enough people believing this that they're guaranteed to come into existence if you deny them access to mainstream platforms.
> but when you live in a deeply red state and are surrounded by Trumpers, there's no way you're going to speak up IRL
You can't interrupt the in-real-life contacts by any means (short of despotic ones).
But there's a certain number of people that will stop polluting an online space if they're being laughed at. But when you force them to create their own echo chamber even the more timid and susceptible to social pressure will be unbothered.
