Do citizens in autocracies believe official discourse? Existing literature has shed light on how autocratic elites use propaganda and rhetoric more broadly to cement their rule and manufacture consent to their policies. Target audiences of such discourses can be the international community and state actors abroad, but also domestic populations. The communication of autocrats has been studied in the context of legitimation strategies. This paper gives a twist to this research by not investigating “positive” legitimation but focusing on justifications of repression in times of contention, and on how such justifications are received by domestic and international audiences. This paper asks 1) how autocrats try to garner legitimacy even for their repressive actions, and 2) how citizens and target groups abroad receive such arguments. We analyze the speeches by officials in Morocco and Tunisia during the Arab uprisings in late 2010 and early 2011 and how they were received by domestic and international audiences. In bringing together both the senders and the audiences of official narratives surrounding the protests in 2010-2011, we differentiate between recipients on the domestic and international levels. The main argument of our paper is that the variance in the responses towards the rhetoric strategies in the two countries also influenced the dynamics of protests leading to divergent outcomes, paving the way for democratic transition in Tunisia and autocratic regime renewal in Morocco. We adopt a qualitative approach employing methods such as event and frame analysis based on the content analysis of speeches by officials during the protests in 2010-2011. For studying the responses of domestic audiences, we have conducted qualitative, semi-structured interviews with activists and observers of the uprisings in Tunisia, Morocco, and Brussels between 2012 and 2022. Interviewees include representatives from NGOs, political parties, women’s and youth movements, professional associations, as well as officials, journalists, academics, and bloggers. This paper is the first to dig into the meso-level of audiences of discourses in autocracies. This adds to our understanding of the nexus of political communication, contentious politics, and state violence under authoritarianism. At the same time, we also shed light on the international dimensions of external support for autocrats or their opponents. This contributes to adding a piece to the puzzle of autocratic resilience and breakdown in the modern Maghreb.