This article discusses the issues raised by James M. Robertson in his review of Joseph Grim Feinberg’s The Paradox of Authenticity: Folklore Performance in Post-Communist Slovakia, which appeared in Contradictions (2019, no. 2). Focusing on the nature and form of a re-politicized folklore, the article argues that to make full sense of the question of authenticity in a modern folkloric movement, authenticity must be seen against the broader backdrop of the alienation inherent to consumer capitalist society. Folklore, it concludes, can become re-politicized by emphasizing people’s participation in art as part of a broader countercultural movement that challenges the consumerist paradigm.