Answer:
The statement that best describes McCarthysim is: extreme, reckless charges that caused people to lose their jobs and destroyed their reputations.
Step-by-step explanation:
McCarthyism is a term used in reference to accusations of disloyalty, subversion or treason, without due respect to a fair legal process where the rights of the accused are respected.
It originates in an episode in the history of the United States that took place between 1950 and 1956 during which Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957) unleashed an extended process of statements, unfounded accusations, denunciations, interrogations, irregular processes and blacklists against people suspected of being communists. The sectors that opposed the irregular and indiscriminate methods of McCarthy denounced the process as a "witch hunt" and led the prominent playwright Arthur Miller to write his famous work The Witches of Salem (1953).