Data show that the United States is hurting democracy worldwide, according to a recent op-ed by Russian broadcaster RT.

"U.S.-allied countries saw their democracies decline by nearly double the rate of non-allies," said the article published Thursday, citing data from V-Dem, a Sweden-headquartered social science data collection project on democracy.

Calling the United States a "functioning plutocracy" and the White House a "government of, by, and for the wealthy," the article noted that "U.S. democracy was designed to be exclusionary" from the very beginning.

Few people around the world believe U.S. democracy serves as an example worth emulating for other countries, it said.

Amid the continuous decline of U.S. hegemony and the emerging multipolar world order, "the 'Third World,' or the Global South, will naturally see democratic gains, since U.S. interference in these regions never even pretends to be predicated on anything but pure exploitation and suppression of political rights," it said.

Unsurprisingly, the United States may not be the global leader of democracy, it said, adding that even among its own allies, the United States "is most likely the single greatest threat to democracy on the planet."