Spray painted across a few locations in Butler Township, graffiti bears the word spoken by former President Donald Trump after his right ear was grazed in an attempted assassination — Fight.

The graffiti appeared shortly after the shooting at Trump’s rally, which was held July 13 at the Butler Farm Show grounds in Connoquenessing Township.

The chant — “Fight, Fight, Fight” — erupted at the Republican National Convention last week among rallygoers in Milwaukee, appearing on a few yard signs and political merchandise, and now in a few public locations a few miles from where the rally took place.

The graffiti can be found along Eagle Mill Road, near the intersection of Whitestown Road and Eberhart Road and near Walmart on Duffy Road.

Dana Jennings Peffer, a Butler Township resident, said she finds the spray-painted signs concerning.

“I think the more important, the bigger question is not what it means to me, or what it means to other people, but what it means to someone who doesn’t necessarily have the mental facility to distinguish between, ‘Hey, you know, let’s fight for our democracy by going out to vote, by hitting the campaign trail,’ and ‘Let’s take up arms and do something,’” she said.

“Going around and posting ‘fight’ in our town isn’t appropriate,” Peffer said. “I find it very disrespectful. Someone lost their life. And not only did he lose his life, his wife and his children were being covered by him as he was losing his life. Two others were injured.”

“Why are we doing this?” Peffer said about the graffiti. “What purpose does it serve to do this, knowing that someone could possibly take this the wrong way?”

Thomas Schmitt, of Connoquenessing Township, said he noticed the first sign along Eagle Mill Road a day or two after the shooting.

“I understood that it was definitely a supportive statement to Trump,” Schmitt said. “I saw it in a similar way to when Trump stood up said, ‘Fight.’ It was kind of intended to say, ‘I’m OK, and we need to continue this effort.’”

Schmitt said he doesn’t believe the writing promotes violence, though the word ‘fight’ “outlines the effort as a conflict (rather) than maybe just a race.”

“I think the intent is to be provocative,” he said. “I feel that’s probably the extent of it — maybe someone stirring the pot. I don’t think someone is saying ‘we need to fight someone.’”

“There’s that undercurrent that’s always there — that’s where we’re at rhetorically,” Schmitt said.

“I think it’s along the same lines as the ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ stuff, where it’s a show of support for a political candidate, but it’s got that bit more of an edge to it than maybe just wearing a Trump 2024 shirt,” he said.

Paul Johnson, a professor of communications at the University of Pittsburgh who tracks political discourse and is the author of “I the People: The Rhetoric of Conservative Populism in the United States,” said the slogan is a response to the attempted assassination that validates supporters’ belief of the country being under attack.

“It means fight for our country,” resident Terri Ann wrote in a Facebook community page, under a request for comments posted by a Butler Eagle reporter. “I saw the word spray painted on Meridian Road, and I think it is great.”

“When (Trump) went down, I thought he was dead,” resident Ray Heltsley wrote. “I think most did. Instead, he rose, like a phoenix from the ashes, and raised his fist defiantly. “FIGHT!! FIGHT!! FIGHT!!” I will crawl through broken glass to vote for that man and I don’t really care what anyone thinks about that.

“As for the ‘FIGHT’ signs around the area, it’s a call to action for all of the Trump supporters who have been bullied into staying quiet,” Heltsley wrote. “No more. It’s time to be bold. It does not mean physically fight anyone. It’s figurative.”

Another resident, Kathy Dufford, shared her concerns under the same Facebook post.

“Spray paint over it before someone takes it seriously and starts fighting,” she wrote, before stating Trump “should have never have said that” after being shot.

When Johnson was asked whether he was concerned about an increase in political attacks, he said that the “fight” slogan also exists within a larger context, namely a shift toward a normalization of political violence which has been on the rise for years.

As an example, Johnson recalled the attack on Paul Pelosi in 2022, when a far-right conspiracy theorist, David DePape, beat him with a hammer during a home invasion.

“There is already the (media) architecture available to get (Trump supporters) to believe (the July 13 assassination attempt) was done by ANTIFA or progressive activists,” Johnson said. “With the 2020 insurrection, we saw plenty of … extremist violence. We were very worried about it being likely to potentially cause events maybe imagined to be retaliatory.”

Peffer said that 30 minutes after the shooting at the Butler Farm Show grounds, an image circulated on social media of a man purported to be the shooter with ties ANTIFA. He was not the shooter, Peffer said.

The shooter was identified in the early hours Sunday, July 14 as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park.

Peffer also noted an interaction with a man in a community Facebook group that led to another Facebook user to private message her, warning her to stop engaging with the individual.

When she clicked on the man’s page, she said she saw a post that read, “It’s time to take down Democrats and load up.”

Two days after the shooting, POLITICO reported that the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued an intelligence bulletin stating “violent extremists or others ‘may attempt follow-on or retaliatory acts of violence’ in response to the attempted assassination.”

“We live in a very heated political environment, and have been for a few years,” Peffer said.

“Now, more than ever we have to tone it down,” she said. “There is no us and them — there’s only us.”