> this particular kind of trolling doesn't work (and didn't work in the case of the fashtag) if we all relax a little about dogwhistles.
No, that's exactly when it works. They aren't doing it to laugh at reactions as an end goal, the mockery exists entirely to delegitimize attention paid to racist/fascist dogwhistles, whose whole purpose is to get paid attention to by the target audience but ignored by the wider audience, which doesn't work when the wider audience is sensitized to and vigilant against them.
To stick with the pepe example: It only works as a dogwhistle now because everyone but Frog Twitter has stopped using it. If the rest of the world had shrugged and kept using it, then it wouldn't be a political symbol now.
I think this is the same mechanism as in the euphemism treadmill[1], where it's not clear if it's better to avoid a word or to double down on it (but in a proud/positive way). There doesn't seem to be a consensus about how to deal with the euphemism treadmill either.
No, that's exactly when it works. They aren't doing it to laugh at reactions as an end goal, the mockery exists entirely to delegitimize attention paid to racist/fascist dogwhistles, whose whole purpose is to get paid attention to by the target audience but ignored by the wider audience, which doesn't work when the wider audience is sensitized to and vigilant against them.