This paper explains when and why authoritarian regimes use repression by shedding light on the role domestic audiences play in violent outcomes. I argue that autocratic repression can be motivated by whether the bystanders of violence (not the direct targets thereof) support its use against opposition groups that threaten the status quo. The paper, which is a chapter from a book manuscript, unsettles conventional assumptions that authoritarian repression is intrinsically unpopular and has important policy implications for mitigating human rights violations. Drawing on 16 months of field research in Egypt and an original, geocoded dataset derived from web-scraping Arabic-language documents, I provide evidence of how strategies of repression can be used to rally support for autocratic rule.