"Democracy Manifest" (also known as "Succulent Chinese Meal", amongst other names) is an October 1991 Australian news segment video by reporter Chris Reason. The Guardian, in 2019, called it "perhaps the pre-eminent Australian meme of the past 10 years". YouTube has several postings of the video with more than a million views each.
The video shows 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."
The video was recorded on 11 October 1991, but not uploaded to the Internet until 2009. A mystery developed about who the man was and what the incident involved, with theories centring on Hungarian chess player Paul Charles Dozsa, known for his dine-and-dash exploits. In 2020, an Australian man, later identified as Jack Karlson, appeared in a music video by Australian punk rock band the Chats and...