The country has been a thinly-veiled empire since FED was established, but rape, pillage and destruction were not really in the toolkit during the WWII for example. Invariably, people fled the advancing Soviet forces, wanting to surrender to the U.S. forces, who treated them well within reason. Now, all the leading thinkers, innovators, and doers who get into trouble, flee the U.S. for their life, settling to live in places like Cambodia, Austria and New Zealand, and to hide in the places such as Russia!
Dr. David Duke knows the answer. But beware: a certain business mogul in Finland once let one of his publications to publish a few pages of David Duke text, translated. The establishment attack was swift and harsh. He lost the magazine but still owns the other businesses, because the enemies have not found a way to totally destroy him without it looking suspicious. Yet.
"If you want to know who has the power, check whom you are not allowed to question"
I can slander up to the limits of my conscience: any world leader, any authority in my country of residence, any branch of government, the Justice system or the Army. But questioning the Holocaust puts me up to jail (while the Holodomor is ok, as long as you don't mention the ethnicity of the people who ordered it), and questioning the crimes of non-European immigrants takes me to court (while discussing the crimes of ethnic Finns is ok).
ADD: Slandering President Putin is ok for us, but not for people in Russia. Slandering the King of Thailand is ok for us, but not for people in Thailand. Slandering me is ok for anyone, except in the context of Crypto Kingdom where even conscious refusal to address me as Your Majesty, will lead to cancellation of account and forfeiture of assets. These examples tell that in some domains in the world, there are local powers, big and small. Interestingly, the slander of POTUS is not punishable offence, adding to the evidence that the power is somewhere else.
Look at this for irony. Happened in the past 24 hours.