It’s not very hard to find pics of Nazi and Trump flags side by side. So at least some of his base sees an affinity between the two worldviews. And Trump seems to have soaked up some of his father’s fascist milieu. It’s fairly well known that daddy was arrested at a Klan rally, but what’s less well-known is that it was actually at a brawl between Klansmen and a group of fascists who opposed some of the Klan’s positions. Was dear old dad fighting with the Klan or with the fascists?
Maybe the Donald doesn’t exactly fit into any standard pigeonhole definition of fascism, and there are after all several pigeonholes. Franco’s version of fascism for example had a pro-Catholic ethos that Hitler’s version of it lacked. And Trump/Hitler analogies do seem to miss the mark in that Trump/Mussolini comparisons appear to be more accurate; it’s the buffoon factor. But even if Trump doesn’t quite fit any of the fascist definitions/pigeonholes, he does seem to fit into an authoritarian neofascist pigeonhole.
He has an authoritarian streak a mile wide for sure, but trolls or even true believers with Nazi flags at a Trump rally do not a Nazi rally make, and guilt by such tangential association is flimsy. Time and again, people with such banners are found at the periphery of conservative movements and photographed as if they represent the whole, or they choose less-obvious flags many might not recognize like the iron cross instead of the swastika. But those swastikas do turn up, and such people aren't getting punched.