The invaluable blogger known as “Zombie” has a new photo essay:

At recent rallies, town hall meetings and “tea parties,” a few protesters have shown up with signs comparing Obama to Hitler (i.e. depicting him with a Hitler mustache), or displaying swastikas in the context of implying that Obama and/or his administration are Nazi-like.

One would think that this would not be particularly newsworthy, but Democrats, the White House and their supporters are expressing outrage at this “horrifying” and “menacing” turn of events. (Or faux-outrage, at least.) Pundits, bloggers, media outlets and even top politicians like Nancy Pelosi are claiming that such signs are unprecedented, racist, and even that anyone who brings a swastika to a protest must be self-identifying as a Nazi (instead of accusing their opponents of being Nazis). When anyone tries to point out that the Left continuously compared Bush to Hitler and brought swastikas to rallies for six straight years during the Bush era, Obama supporters mock such claims, demand proof, and then try to ignore any individual examples proffered.

Since I had a front-row seat between 2003 and 2008 at anti-Bush protests in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I saw literally THOUSANDS of Bush/Hitler comparisons and swastikas, I thought perhaps it would be useful to compile here in one place a small sampling of them — to prove beyond any doubt that Hitler and swastikas were referenced incessantly at basically every single protest during the Bush administration. Anyone who claims otherwise is lying, as is anyone who claims that people who bring swastikas to rallies are necessarily self-identifying as Nazis.

I’m not saying I “approve” of the new variant of this trend (comparing Obama to Hitler), nor that it is any more clever or insightful than comparing Bush to Hitler; I only post these images here to highlight the hypocrisy of anyone now expressing outrage that Obama could uniquely suffer such an indignity.

The pictures below were all taken by me at protests between 2003 and 2008 in the San Francisco Bay Area. One can easily find hundreds of similar photos on my site zombietime. And I am just one photographer in one city — there are innumerable similar examples by other citizen journalists in other cities across America.

Click over to relieve the carefree days when, as leftwing presidential nominees liked to remark at the time, dissent truly was patriotic.

Related: Newly revised for 2009! “The Etiquette Czar’s Rules for Patriotic Protest.”