I find this a bit confusing. Provocative to whom? There are 1) people calling other people Nazis and there are 2) people being called Nazis.
1) Can't claim they're being provoked because they're the ones using the word in the first place. I don't think 2) would be offended by the word itself. They don't like being called Nazis, which is different.
When someone says "Nazi" I'm thinking "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question" and the "superiority of the Aryan master race". These are very bad things and practically everyone agrees!
Side note: perhaps when people say Nazis they mean ethno-nationalists?
Nazis killed millions of people in Europe and took my country apart. What was left behind is a deeply damaged society. I don't know how many generations it will take to fix it. So it annoys me when the word is thrown so casually at any random person on the internet. A dude going to a Mall with a swastika flag is probably just an ass that wants to "trigger lefties". And they take the bait. And media takes the bait too.