Context kinda matters here…
On 2 March 1849, Prussian soldiers came to Marx’s home to arrest one of the writers. Marx refused to turn over the writer, and the soldiers eventually left.
On 16 May 1849 Marx received an official note from the royal government declaring:
“The tendency of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung to provoke in its readers contempt for the present government, and incite them to violent revolution and the setting up of a social republic has become stronger in its latest pieces… The right of hospitality which he has so disgracefully abused is therefore to be withdrawn from its editor-in-chief, Dr. Karl Marx, and since he has not obtained permission to prolong his stay in these states, he is ordered to leave them within 24 hours. If he should not comply voluntarily with this demand, he is to be forcibly conveyed across the frontier.”[12]
This expulsion order, combined with the growing threat of arrest or exile of its writers forced the NRZ to publish its last issue on 19 May 1849, known as the “red issue” as it was printed entirely in red ink. Marx closed with a sharp rebuttal against the suppression of the NRZ:
"Why these absurd phrases, these official lies? The trend and tone of the latest pieces of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung do not differ a whit from its first ‘sample piece.’ * * *
"And the ‘social republic’? Have we proclaimed it only in the ‘latest pieces’ of the Neue Rheinische Zeitung? Did we not speak plainly and clearly enough for these dullards who failed to see the ‘red’ thread running through all our comments and reports on the European movement? * * *
“We have no compassion and we ask no compassion from you. When our turn comes, we shall not make excuses for the terror. But the royal terrorists, the terrorists by the grace of God and the law, are in practice brutal, disdainful, and mean, in theory cowardly, secretive, and deceitful, and in both respects disreputable.”[13]
