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One thing that is vitally important as a moderator is being able to identify what I think of as "plausible deniability techniques."
These are patterns of behavior that give the speaker some degree of plausible deniability while allowing them to threaten or demean someone else. It's a variant of the JAQoffs and in just as poor faith.
I have numerous examples from decades of moderation experience, and it all follows about the same patterns.
1/
What the attacker does is they select some set of imagery that the victim will understand but that gives others cover. Either deliberate cover (e.g., no no we're just joking around!) or incidental cover (where the third party doesn't have context to know what is going on, e.g., what's wrong with badly drawn images of pepe the frog?)
Anything to reduce the cognitive dissonance that a third party needs.
Perhaps it even is something that _is_ innocuous…
…if your remove it from context.
2/
This is an incredibly common channer tactic. It's also a common bully tactic.
You were nervous when you said something and moved your hands in a particular way? That movement now gets weaponized, and no one is the wiser.
Except the victim.
It's the "it's okay to be white" sticker. The pepe the frog meme. The sealion who is "just trying to hold a civil conversation" timed to maximize vulnerability of the victim.
It's the out of context song lyric. The random photo of a gun.
3/
On a forum I moderated we'd have people who knew exactly where the line was and walk right up to it.
Repeatedly. With the exact same people. Over and over and over again.
If you didn't correct it as a moderator you'd lose the person they were targeting as a member and then you'd end up ultimately having to ban the troll anyways.
As a moderator this is the sort of thing that you have to watch for. As a team of moderators this is the sort of thing that you have to analyze.
4/
This sort of thing is also why dense rulebooks tend not to work, but having standards and consensus among your moderation staff is critical.
But if you blithely ignore that this is a technique you will lose to the bullies every single time. Your moderation will break down and, what's worse:
You probably won't know it until it is too late to fix the damage that has been caused. It will continue to get worse and it will continue to escalate until you stop it.
You have to learn to see it.
5/5
I've slept, so some concrete examples:
* Having identified that talking about killing a pig is upsetting, the bully talks about bacon, makes Lord of the Flies references, and uses emoji—seemingly randomly—like 
* A poster followed around another poster and always commented, on everything, "serious business." The meaning isn't known to the moderators, but the target knows.
* Everyone puts 
(or Deplorable) in their name and make innocuous comments whenever someone posts.
* Knowing that the target lives in Seattle the bully starts talking about their "friends" in Seattle. Or references are made to where they live. Talking about the local coffee shop or whatever.
* Knowing the victim reacts to certain topics, making sure to bring those up on an ongoing basis (e.g., a piece of news if the victim finds that news triggering, or food topics if the victim has a history with EDs).
* Constantly referencing guns in song lyrics, so as to say "no I'm just quoting!"
These are all things I've seen. They are not hypotheticals.
What they all have in common is that an outsider has cover. Again this can be either innocuously (………okay so they are talking about bacon, what's the big deal?) or maliciously (well they are clearly just quoting a song and I refuse to read any further into why they chose those lyrics at this moment in time), or anything inbetween.
What they have in common is that there are at least two audiences for the coded behavior.
@hrefna and why automated moderation will always, always fail - the need to conceptualize the surrounding context is not currently doable with technology.
@hrefna someone should teach teachers these basics of interacting with small and large assholes.. in middle-school we had a nazi problem and not a single teacher would step in. they would just let those kids do their thing.. (in theory the whole classroom was complicit in tolerating behavior that on the streets would have resulted in a fine or worse)
when asked about it they would of course claim they didnt see it that way: the pupil was actually just stretching their arm or some shit.. 
@hrefna 1000%
Referring back to the server I run, we created it because this thing kept happening in the large crafting discord we were all in. We got frustrated seeing good folks run off and rules lawyer bullies and trolls stay.
@hrefna
Any help on how to educate yourself about all the symbolism constantly being invented? I don't know what I don't know.
@CassandraVert To be honest a lot of it is just listening and watching, then questioning your own assumptions again and again.
Why _are_ so many people posting pig emoji all of a sudden? What am I missing?
Why does this person seem to be getting reactive all of a sudden? Is something going on?
Hm. I know what the narrative says, but what does the person say about what is happening to them right now?
etc.
That and being willing to look for problem accounts and see how they interact.
@hrefna I fear I have also seen your first example, in the field 
@hrefna it was her PET pig even, not just pigs in the abstract
@greg Yuuuuup. It was very, very intentional and directed.
@hrefna a principle I've developed for myself is if A says something to B, B objects, and A keeps saying it *to B*, then A it's in the wrong.
We have a recurring issue with this about "pinging", to the point where we have added rules to the effect of, "if someone says don't ping them, yes you need to take extra steps to insure you aren't".
Don't use it that much though because most trolls I deal with are not targeting individuals but rather just being generally agressive or trying to slip actual fascist dogwhistles into conversation.