Democracy Manifest

"Jack Karlson" redirects here. For people with a similar name, see Jack Carlson (disambiguation).

"Democracy Manifest" (also known as "Succulent Chinese Meal", amongst other names) is an October 1991 Australian news segment video by the reporter Chris Reason. In 2019 The Guardian called it "perhaps the pre-eminent Australian meme of the past 10 years".^[1] YouTube has several postings of the video with more than a million views each.^[2]

Surrounded by police, the man is surprised at being arrested, exclaiming: "Gentlemen, this is democracy manifest!"

It shows a man being arrested by Queensland Police at a Chinese restaurant. As the police forcibly detain him, he remarks in a stentorian^[3][4] 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."

It was recorded on 11 October 1991,^[4] 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 a Hungarian chess player named 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 the Australian punk rock band the Chats and revealed himself as the man in question.^[5] Karlson, who had been a serial prison escapee, was arrested for credit card fraud by the Queensland Police Service.^[6]

Synopsis

The video shows a man, unidentified at the time, being escorted by police out of a Chinese restaurant in Brisbane, Queensland, into a waiting police car.^[7] He says, "You just assured me that I could speak." He is agitated by this situation, and when told he is being placed under arrest he exclaims, "I am under what?" As police try to wrestle him into the car, the man says, "Gentlemen, this is democracy manifest."^[7] As he is being forced inside the car, he says, "Have a look at the headlock here." As the scuffle continues, he exclaims: "See that chap over there ..." , and then he suddenly shouts, "Get your hand off my penis!^[7][8] This is the bloke who got me on the penis before."^[6]

As he is being handcuffed, he asks: "Why did you do this to me? For what reason? What is the charge? Eating a meal? A succulent Chinese meal?"^[7] As the police struggle to restrain the man, he says: "Ooh, that's a nice headlock, sir", and then states, "Ah, yes. I see that you know your judo well. Good one." He is then forced into the car, feet first, while asking someone inside the vehicle: "And you, sir, are you waiting to receive my limp penis?", "How dare ... get your hands off me",^[6] and then bidding bystanders "ta ta and farewell".^[6]

Search for identity

It was taped by the reporter Chris Reason for Seven News.^[7] Reason's reporting said that the man was arrested in a case of mistaken identity ("the police thought they'd caught Queensland's most wanted"). Other later sources said he was a dine-and-dasher, or an international criminal, while an officer named Dean Biron, who attended the scene, recalled he was wanted on 19 counts of fraud and receiving stolen goods worth AU$70,000.^[4] The man gave his name as Cecil George Edwards, but he had also been identified by aliases including Johann Kelmut Karlson and Cecil Gerry Edwards.^[7][9] The clip remained obscure until a raw video version was uploaded to the internet in January 2009 and became an immediate viral video.^[1] It was missing Reason's voice-over explaining who the man was and what the incident was about, and internet speculation attempted to resolve the mystery.^[10]

Mistaken identifications

Theories about the man's identity centred on Paul Charles Dozsa, a Hungarian chess player and notorious dine-and-dasher,^{[11][12][13][14]} but there were also serious doubts about this theory. Observers asked why the arrest was filmed from so many angles, why it was filmed at all and why the allegedly Hungarian man did not sound Hungarian. Friends, family and acquaintances of Dozsa also stated he was not the man in the video.^{[15][16][17][18][19]} Other theories included that the man was the politician John Bartlett, the video was a skit from an unidentified television programme, or that the man was a real dine-and-dasher named Gregory John Ziegler.^[20]

Identification in 2020

The mystery of the man's identity continued until 2020, when the Australian punk band the Chats published a music video titled "Dine 'N Dash" that re-created the viral video with an older man acting the part of the arrestee.^[21][5] The actor then identified himself in an interview with Sydney Morning Herald as "Cecil George Edwards", the man in the viral video; he was now going by the name of "Jack K". Asked why he made such a show during the arrest, he said he wanted to appear crazy so he might be placed into an asylum where it would be easier to escape. It was also revealed he had an artistic career making paintings, including some of the arrest.^[7] That same year, a man only identified as "Mr Democracy Manifest" was interviewed in a video regarding the incident for Sportsbet.^[22] In 2021 Seven News covered the story of the arrest, interviewing both Reason and the man arrested in the original video, who only gave his name as Jack. When asked for his surname, he jokingly replied "it depends which one you want".^[9]

Jack Karlson

It in fact depicts Jack Peter Karlson^[23] (born Cecil George Edwards; 6 August 1942 – 7 August 2024)^[24] being arrested for paying for a Chinese meal with a purportedly stolen credit card. He was being followed by an American Express investigator who identified him as a credit card fraudster and called the police.^[3] The incident took place at the China Sea Restaurant on 11 Duncan Street, Fortitude Valley. The restaurant has since relocated to Milton, Queensland.^[25]

Karlson began a lifelong career of petty crime in 1956 as a ward of Blackheath Presbyterian Boys' Home in the Brisbane suburb of Oxley, where he is alleged to have been subjected to physical and sexual abuse.^[24] He was in prison for much of the first half of his life and frequently escaped. In prison, he said he met Jim McNeil and encouraged him to write plays about his prison experience, which became famous throughout Australia. According to Karlson, they remained friends until McNeil's death in 1982.^[26]

The Radio National programme Earshot broadcast an hour-long biographical documentary on the incident in January 2022.^[27] In June 2022 the academic Dean Biron, who was one of the arresting officers accused in the "Get your hands off my penis" part of the video, wrote an article about the incident. Biron gave his version of events, such as why the police were making the arrest, stating that, contrary to other reports made, it was not considered a major case. Biron said that after the arrest, the man—who had used the Edwards alias—was held in police custody and then released on bail overnight, and disappeared until his "15 minutes of fame" in 2020, "somehow scrubbed clean of that pesky past".^[4]

In 2023 the true crime author Mark Dapin published a biography of Karlson titled Carnage: A Succulent Chinese Meal, Mr. Rent-a-Kill and the Australian Manson Murders that also explores his connections to other criminals.^[28][29] The book also revealed that Karlson was an admirer of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, and that on at least one occasion he threw a party at his home to celebrate Hitler's birthday.^[30]

Karlson died of prostate cancer on 7 August 2024 at the age of 82.^[31][32]

Analysis

In 2024 Terry Barnes wrote in The Spectator that when Karlson said "succulent Chinese meal" he was certainly being facetious; "Australian suburban Chinese cafés are legendary for their cheap but bland and tasteless food."^[3] Barnes stated that Karlson had become something of an online folk hero in Australia for resisting the police in a case of heavy-handed overreach, a theme which resonated with the public during the COVID-19 years which saw lockdowns and perceived harsh authoritarian responses; "for a time, we were all Jack Karlson", suggesting that this was key to Karlson's popularity.^[3]

Karlson later explained the meaning of Democracy Manifest as judgement by the people, through the media, saying, "Here's an opportunity to prove my innocence, because they've dragged me out, thinking I was some sort of international gangster, when I knew that I wasn't. Here's a chance, the camera, for the people of Australia and to let democracy manifest itself gloriously. That's why I carried on like that."^[32]

Influence

Since being uploaded to YouTube in 2009, the video has become a viral hit in Australian culture.^[7] When the Australian activist Julian Assange was arrested at the Embassy of Ecuador, London, in 2019, comparisons were made between both respective arrests and "it didn't take long for Aussies to all make the same joke".^[33]

The American rapper Mac Miller (under his production alias Larry Fisherman) sampled the video in his 2015 instrumental mixtape Run-On Sentences, Volume Two.^[34] In 2019 an orchestral soundtrack to the footage was performed at a Sydney opera centre.^[35]

The Australian horse racing trainer Chris Waller trains "Democracy Manifest", a horse owned by Steve Allam,^[36] most notable for winning the $150,000 Catanach Jewellers Handicap at Randwick Racecourse on 15 April 2023.^[37]

The video is alluded to in the 2023 film Napoleon, in one scene of which Jean-François-Auguste Moulin is arrested and protests, "I am enjoying a succulent breakfast!"^[38][39][40]

In the month before Karlson died, he and one of his arresting officers had been speaking with Australian media to promote a new documentary about the incident, titled The Man Who Ate a Succulent Chinese Meal, directed by Heath Davis.^[3]

Two episodes of the television series What We Do in the Shadows have referenced the meme. In the episode "P.I. Undercover: New York", the vampire Laszlo Cravensworth offers another character a "succulent Chinese meal" in stentorian tones similar to Karlson's,^[41] and in the following episode "Come Out and Play", Lazlo also quotes Karlson by saying "I see you know your judo" and "get your hands off me".