The Match!

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For the TV show, see The Match (TV series).

The Match! is an atheist/anarchist journal published in Tucson, Arizona, United States since 1969.

The Match! is published irregularly; new issues usually appear once or twice per year. Over 100 issues have been published to date. The Match! is edited, published, and printed by Fred Woodworth.

The Match! espouses a generally individualist anarchist form of anarchism. In addition the magazine also espouses atheism, opposition to surveillance technologies which may be seen as posing a threat to privacy, and opposition to computers. For this reason, Woodworth prints and publishes The Match! entirely without the use of digital technology, and does not have or desire a web site.

The Match! is critical of capitalist libertarianism, and of some anarchists such as Noam Chomsky's support for social democracy, for what the editor sees as compromises with statism. In particular, the magazine is critical of religion or supernatural beliefs of any kind. The publication also criticizes writers such as Bob Black, Tad Kepley^[1], Feral Faun and organizations such as Crimethinc, Killing King Abacus, and Venomous Butterfly Publications. Woodworth criticises as unethical their support and justification of theft (shoplifting^[2] and plagiarism^[3]) and revolutionary violence under the rationales of Illegalism and insurrectionism.

The philosophy of The Match! is ethical anarchism, which is described on the back of the journal.

Woodworth uses "cold type" composing machines from the mid-20th century such as the VariTyper and JustoWriter to typeset copy for The Match!. He then makes pasteups of each page and shoots them with a home-built copy camera to make negatives. The negatives are then used to make offset printing plates using direct solar energy by exposing them to the sun. The plates are then mounted into a small offset printing press and thus used to print the pages of The Match!.