I'm not sure if this quote takes into account mob rule. Take ethnic strife in Myanmar or in Africa or rural Mexico, etc. It's not governments doing it --it's mostly grass roots after a grievance is unaddressed and explodes.
Today, carefully crafted messages lead people to self-select propaganda. The stereotype of the MAGA uncle is the result of an appeal to fear, resentment and nostalgia.
I'm sure everyone knows what Voltaire said about this: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Is there any chance we can return to the idea that people can disagree with us without being dead to us afterward?
We've forgotten about the impact of the big life changing technology of 100 years ago -- the radio. Radio demonstrated that mass media with extended reach can only be tamed by the leash of state authority. I'm in my 40s and remember boring radio of the 1980s and earlier. You might ask yourself... why was radio so boring? Why did it turn into a wild west in the 90s, then into weird right wing blah?
The reason is simple -- and it happened before. If you look back to the 1920s and 1930s, you had figures like Huey Long and Father Coughlin developing massive reach and exterting problematic influence. Cults of personality like Ron Paul and ultimately President Trump are really the same model. Getting out of it and saving the naive uncles depends and further media consolidation and regulation.
My guess is that's one of the reasons why the web plutocrats are moving so blatantly to establish dominance -- the free money era will get shut down by the kickback of MAGA's eventual demise.
The grievance is also often created by the govt.
Africa is not a single place you can generalize across in regards to sources of ethnic strife or anything else.
The most obvious depravity was Leopold’s depredations of the Congo, but many many examples exist. The generational trauma on society is hard to fathom. And of course the arming and covert intervention of Soviet & western proxies during the Cold War fueled unrest and hostility.
I'm reasonably acquainted with history in all of those places. What happened in Africa happened. The results are speak for themselves.
In no way did I say that the depredations of past tyrants and conquerers didn't take place or were insignificant. If Ceasar's accounts of Gaul are even partially true, his armies probably butchered a sizable percentage of the human race in that campaign and the years to follow. The Spanish conquest, subjugation and genocide of Latin America utterly obliterated mesoamerican culture and was sweeping in the size and scope of it's brutality.
So why is Africa different? Well, for the most part it took place in the immediate pre-modern and "modern" era. There were coastal outposts previously, but the colonialists really exploded in the latter half of the 19th century. Disease wasn't a factor as it was in the Americas, but technology had a far greater impact -- tribesman vs. machine guns and steam engines ends the way it ends. You also had a different focus, private interests were interested soley in raw material extraction. Cultural imposition wasn't a priority -- it was extract value above all.
I would encourage you to read about the Congo. "The Rest is History" podcast did a series a few months back that is a good introduction. Nasty business.