smoke screen
noun
noun: smokescreen; plural noun: smokescreens; noun: smoke-screen; plural noun: smoke-screens; noun: smoke screen; plural noun: smoke screens

a cloud of smoke created to conceal military operations.
a ruse designed to disguise someone’s real intentions or activities.
“he tried to create a smokescreen by quibbling about the statistics”

In this work we use the expression “smoke screen” when we don’t want our nastiness to be seen… so we pretend that we are the victim, not the perpetrator.
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