There actually is an idiomatic English phrase "torches and pitchforks" that appears in longer expressions such as "They'll come after us with torches and pitchforks" and "the townspeople will be at your door with torches and pitchforks." As flith notes in a comment above, the image is of simple villagers or country folk responding to something terrifying or outrageous by grabbing the most effective weapons they have at hand and approaching the danger or enemy en masse.
The phrase "torches and pitchforks" coalesced relatively recently, but examples of the frightened and unruly crowd bearing rustic implements goes back considerably farther. For example, from Frederick Whymper, "Adventures Above the Clouds," in Good Words for 1883 (1883):
Next afternoon [August 23, 1783] it [the hot-air balloon] was launched [in Paris], and rose to a considerable height in spite of the heavy rain which was falling. The excitement was so intense that fashionably dressed ladies allowed themselves to be drenched to the skin rather than lose the wonderful sight. When it fell near the village of Gonesse, about fifteen miles from Paris, it caused considerable alarm.
"It is supposed by many to have come from another world; many fly; others, more sensible, think it a monstrous bird. After it has alighted there is yet motion in it from the gas it still contains. A small crowd gains courage from numbers, and for an hour approaches by gradual steps, hoping meanwhile the monster will take flight. At length one bolder than the rest takes his gun, stalks carefully within shot, fires, witnesses the monster shrink, gives a shout of triumph, and the crowd rushes in with flails and pitchforks. One tears what he thinks to be the skin, and causes a poisonous stench; again all retire. Shame, no doubt, now urges them on, and they tie the cause of alarm to a horse's tail, who gallops across the country, tearing it to shreds."
The quoted language from an eyewitness account written in 1783 shows the role of pitchforks in a gathering of disturbed villagers. The role of torches in "torches and pitchforks" is evident in this clip from Frankenstein (1931).
But the precise idiomatic phrase "torches and pitchforks" appears in Google Books search results from as early as 1958. From Warren Miller, The Way We Live Now (1958):
But Lionel remembered it. He had been here once before, with Nicholas. He remembered the door most clearly of all. The first time he saw it, amazed at its height and thickness, its barred strength, he had a vision of an enraged peasantry with torches and pitchforks advancing, singing revolutionary songs.
The level of use of "torches and pitchforks" is not large, but there are enough matches to support an Ngram chart that shows usage increasing fairly continuously since 1985:
In any event, the word pitchforks sometimes appears without torches but with the same sense of grassroots unrest among an unsophisticated but potentially dangerous (and perhaps even revolutionary) portion of the citizenry.
As neko's answer points out, the identity of the pitchfork bearers in the United States has shifted from disgruntled anti-Obama Tea Partiers eight years ago to disgruntled anti-Trump demonstrators in recent weeks. The overlap in group membership is probably quite small, but the (figurative) pitchforks they wield are (according to the author) much the same.
