They support him because they know they are going to pay the price for defending such a brutal dictator. If the face of the regime changed it would be much more credible, until then it's just a foreign Russian puppet regime that will become a magnet for violence and unrest until it finally collapses.
That's a bullshit narrative which can only be applied to a handful of authoritarian states. That's the kind of narrative that Hollywood films are made of. If anything, prior to the Russian intevention would have been the time for those who fear such a "brutal dictator" to seize the opportunity to overthrow him when he was at his weakest. They didn't. They either stood by him or fled to other countries.
Also refer to my earlier post.
"Maybe you should look up wahhabism. You're clearly out of your depth when it comes to discussing Syria.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WahhabismI quote.
"Wahhabism has been accused of being "a source of global terrorism",[30][31] and for causing disunity in the Muslim community by labeling Muslims who disagreed with the Wahhabi definition of monotheism as apostates[32] (takfir), thus paving the way for their bloodshed."