I mean, it’s drawing a _bit_ of a long bow, but there’s a pretty cogent argument to be made that European powers in many nations funded/armed criminal gangs (by buying slaves/selling weapons), and those gangs took over the country with that backing, which destroyed what public institutions existed, and normalised “strongman coercion”.

There’s various points and counterpoints within that and I’m woefully ill equipped to evaluate them, but it’s not wrong “prima fasciae”.