The same happened in Turkey last summer too. You might have heard, "the Gezi protests". Looking back, the whole thing just made everyone a bit more extreme on their views. Some government officials just ignored the situation while the prime minister went on a campaign to stop the so called "looters" (yes he did call the protesters that) from "disrespecting the public opinion". Now? It's a flame war between many groups, with some scandals here and there for what it seems to be entertainment only. Everyone, and I mean everyone -including me- seems to ignore everything opposed to what they believe. I try to be objective, but I can't. People believe in "stuff". I'm still getting amazed by how interested we are in believing in something and the lengths we can go just to keep our beliefs' integrity.
"Looking back, the whole thing just made everyone a bit more extreme on their views."
Yeah, that's exactly what we had in Russia. The protests were about rigged elections. They also happened to be peaceful. Nevertheless, you can now find a lot of people who call protester names as if that was something provably bad. You can also find a lot of people who outright support everything the state do - thing you could not find before. A lot of people switched from "not caring" to "actively fearing change and swearing on any critique of status quo".
