“Democracy Manifest” (also known by “Succulent Chinese Meal” and other names) is an Australian viral video and internet meme. It was recorded in 1991 for a news segment by the reporter Chris Reason and uploaded to the Internet in 2009. YouTube has several postings of the video, with more than a million views each.
The video depicts a man being arrested by Queensland Police at a Chinese restaurant. As the police forcibly detain him, he remarks in a stentorian tone, “Gentlemen, this is democracy manifest!”, “What is the charge? Eating a meal? A succulent Chinese meal?”, “Get your hand off my penis!”, and, after an aborted attempt by a police officer to headlock him, “I see that you know your judo well”.
A mystery developed about who the man was and what the incident involved, with theories centring on the Hungarian dine-and-dasher Paul Charles Dozsa. In 2020, Australian citizen Jack Karlson (1942–2024) identified himself as the man. In 2019, The Guardian called the video “perhaps the pre-eminent Australian meme of the past 10 years”. In 2026, it was selected for preservation by the National Film and Sound Archive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Manifest
