Existing scholarship often states that repression is politically costly for an authoritarian leader. Repression is believed to create strong negative emotions that motivate people to revolt. Yet, some leaders employ widespread repression while maintaining high levels of popular support. How is this possible? I argue that bystanders to repression (not the direct targets thereof) can support its use against groups they perceive as a threat to society. Drawing on novel data on protests and repression in Egypt, I investigate how repression affected citizen support for the regime of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi after the 2013 coup. This paper aims to advance scholarship on repression by centering attention on how everyday citizens perceive state violence, while highlighting several policy implications for human rights.