humans are social creatures. we are very good at reading faces. the masks took that away from us. it put a literal wall between each other. it's much easier to act mean, rude, controlling, condescending, etc. when you can't see the other person's face. it basically made billions of people automatically distrustful and fearful of each other.  and then when the floyd riots kicked off it let blacks get away with doing whatever they want, nobody would yell at a black for not wearing a mask or acting like a baboon at a store, thus antagonizing people further.  the masks were key to the whole operation, they were not incidental. especially when you understand that they started mandating them after they said they were unnecessary and before they had any evidence the the masks did what they said they do.
United States