Jeff’s wrong. Nobody would have let him get away with one tenth of the lies he said. There is no shot in hell JT would have given him an idol. That’s one example of many.
Can you explain why they would vote him out? If you were playing Survivor, why would you vote him out?
In the beginning phase of the game he is strong and helps the tribe win immunities. After the merge, he is good at alienating people, which makes him a good person to take with you to the final.
If all you had seen was his first season, it looks like a winning strategy to stick with Russell from the beginning, letting him do all the dirty work and alienate people, and then get all the votes in the final (which worked for Natalie).
Of course, now with his second season, it looks like that strategy might backfire, as it did for Parvati.
But, your point was about the villains & heroes only having seen his first season, and based on that Natalie’s strategy seemed to work out quite well for her.
This I will give you. And if JT had not given him the idol, Parvati could not use the two idols on Sandra and Jerri, and could have picked the wrong one to give it to, which would have meant the heroes would have the majority. That would most likely have lead to Russell being voted out, but we can never know for sure.