Speaking of words having meanings, what exactly do you mean by dog-whistle here? I understand dog-whistle to mean coded language for a different concept.

Dog whistle for what? Please define what it is a dog whistle for. Maybe in that context you'll find the common definition understood by people using it

The word is starting to be used by the left in the same way the right uses "woke": It's become watered down and an over-used way to simply say "anything my side doesn't like".

- Climate change is real: "woke"

- Firing people in government: "fascist"

- Compassion and fairness: "woke"

- Cruelty toward political enemies: "fascist"

- Expertise-driven and reason-driven policies: "woke"

- Stacking government positions with loyal cronies: "fascist"

- Rights for women, minorities, gay people, and so on: "woke"

- Handouts to corporations: "fascist"

They've become vague words that mean the same thing: "Politics I don't like"

One could do worse than using Eco's Ur-Fascism[1] as the starting point. The man had personal experience and he could write (oh how he could write.) However, I'd expect that some would dismiss him as an inveterate lefty (he wasn't), so we're back on square one.

[1] https://archive.org/details/umberto-eco-ur-fascism/umberto-e...

I've heard this dismissal a good bit often ("that's just a nothing word that means 'bad thing I don't like' ") but that's really just not true.

It has been consistently defined through the decades, especially during the 20th century. Here's one common example you can find from the 1983 American Heritage Dictionary and it sounds pretty familiar:

"A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."