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We have an update to our Allstate Canada online Islamist bozo story: Shayan Siddiqi, who hails from the great state of Pakistan, is now among the ranks of the unemployed.

Siddiqi is — or rather was — a Senior Consultant Analyst for Financial Planning and Analysis at Toronto-based Allstate Canada.

But in his spare time, Siddiqi put financial planning aside and ventured onto the internet to spew hatred toward certain groups.

Here are a few of the disturbing social media posts that Siddiqi proudly authored:

Siddiqi believes “Jews always play the victim” and constantly refers to Jews with the juice box emoji, a coded way to bypass social media platforms for flagging hate speech used by antisemites and neo-Nazis.

He has further dabbled with that hate speech by calling LeBron James “LeGoy James”.

Siddiqi has paid tribute to fallen IRGC leader Ayatollah Khamenei by offering “Rest In Peace” notifications multiple times over. He approves of Islamists mourning him in Canada, claiming “nobody [is] celebrating” his assassination. This is despite millions of Iranians in the diaspora hitting the streets globally to clamour for regime change in Tehran. But never mind…

Siddiqi also stated he wants to see all Israelis who are pro-Israel in Canada arrested. He refers to them as “Pissraeli(s).” He has stated that synagogues in Toronto being shot at are “false flag” attacks, and he’s been spotted using the Hamas inverted red triangle.

So we sought comment from Allstate. We wanted to know if they knew about Siddiqi’s vile posts and if his postings violated Allstate’s code of conduct.

By way of background, Allstate’s net worth is more than US$54 billion. As you can imagine, this multinational corporation has an entire media relations department. But as we found out, as they say in Alabama, these dogs don’t hunt.

Our first email to Allstate Canada’s media relations team was sent on April 29. It was met with radio silence. In the following days, we phoned the media relations department and left a message. No response. So, we reached out to Allstate Canada’s corporate head office in Northbrook, Ill. Again, no response.

Then we made a house call to Allstate Canada in North Toronto. Unfortunately, although Allstate occupies an entire floor of an office tower, virtually nobody’s home! For whatever reason, Allstate is still operating under COVID-19 work-from-home protocols. Um, can somebody buy this company a calendar already?

But even after we personally delivered a message regarding Sidiqqi, yet again, nobody at Allstate Canada could be bothered to get back to us. And so it was that we ran the story on May 4.

Now, here’s where it gets very interesting. Within a few hours of our story being published, we FINALLY received a terse email from Allstate’s media relations team:

"This individual is no longer employed by Allstate Canada. Please update your story to reflect this."

So, now we finally know the unspoken strategy of Allstate’s so-called media relations strategy. That is to say, these communications specialists thought that if they did not respond to my questions, then this would effectively kill the story.

On that presumption, they were dead wrong.

While we always want to get the other side of the story, if the other side refuses to provide a comment, then the story doesn’t die on the vine. It proceeds. What’s more, when we report the story, we make sure to note that the other side refused to provide a response. And this, by the way, is never a good look for the other side. In fact, it smacks of cowardice and incompetence.

So it is at the end of the day, Allstate Canada eventually did the right thing for the wrong reason. Which is to say they only threw Siddiqi under the bus when it became apparent that Allstate was going to endure a PR black eye. What an absolute joke.

Furthermore, by protecting a closet Islamist until that Islamist proved to be too much PR damage for the company, this makes a mockery of Allstate’s branding — you know, that Allstate is the so-called “compassionate” insurance company, that they are “the good hands people.”

Bottom line: As we discovered firsthand in dealing with Allstate, sometimes you are greeted with a pair of “good hands," and other times, you just receive a raised middle finger…