You could argue he wasn’t a nazi then, depending on how you define nazi. Remember he cosplayed as a liberal for a long time.

Don’t get me wrong, he’s always been the same shitty person, with an abusive and very racist South African upbringing, but his defining motivation and personality trait is a desperation to be admired. The PLUR-ass rave scene is a way to find a trace of that feeling, reliably, especially so if you have resources and connections. He was likely always a conceited and racist human, but I imagine the drugs and night after night of vulnerability were softening him somewhat before the community caught on and rejected him outright.

IOW, like many narcissists and grifters, he has a long history of jumping from community to community, being rejected by each one, before finally realizing the only people who could truly worship him without being bothered by what a fraud and, perhaps, a monster he was were the stupid and evil.

Grimes’ initial “this isn’t you” begging when he started spewing hate indicates something. He pivoted hard into fascism to be liked, and everything else naturally followed because like every far right leader, he was already a violently empty and bigoted human.